This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th

When to comes to youth conditioning Brian Grasso leads the world… Brian is the Founder and Executive Director of the International Youth Conditioning Association, an organization that is changing the way we look at exercise when it comes to our kids.

Besides heading up the IYCA Brian has written feature articles for sport training magazines throughout North America including, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, SportingKid, American Track & Field and Personal Fitness Professional. Brian also contributes to the monthly British sport training publication, Successful Coaching.

When you hear what Brian has to say I’ve no doubt you’ll look at the the relationship between exercise and our children in a new light. Brian talks about how we can get our children to embrace and enjoy exercise, how to teach them mindset skills, how we can all improve our lives daily and what needs to be done the fix the current youth obesity problem.

Just Click Play To Listen To The Interview:

Chris McCombs (CM): This is Chris McCombs from SoCalWorkout.com, and I'm here with Brian Grasso.

Brian is the founder and director of the International Youth Conditioning Association. Brian is also a well-known, respected, and outspoken in the youth athletic development industry, and has written feature articles for sport training magazines throughout the world.

We're going to be speaking with Brian about how parents can help their children develop a fitness mindset, and how we can teach our children to embrace a healthy, happy, and active lifestyle. Brian, how are you doing?

Brian Grasso (BG): I'm great, man. How are you doing?

CM: I am excellent. We thank you for being with us today.

BG: It's my honor.

CM: Brian, what do you do?

BG: With regards to the mindset, we're talking about mindset and youth fitness and healthy lives, healthy families, and Chris, it really does start from there.

In our society, we tend to segment and then sub-segment what we believe children should be doing for physical education in schools, what we should be doing for sport participation, what we should be doing for adjunct fitness, for example; but really, it's all part of a larger puzzle. Let me explain that.

P.E., in this country, has been downgraded as to either being removed from schools for budget constraints and academic constraints, or it's really just informal sports participation. We're getting kids to play kickball or basketball without instruction or development science or development pediatric exercise science being appropriately placed in the scope of a 45-minute or 60-minute class.

In respect to youth sport, we've gone from an age of innocence, where youth sports when I was a kid, and I'm sure, Chris, when you were a kid, was all about fun and playing and learning and comradery and developing character and life lessons. We've changed that to an over-exuberance towards competition and the big "W"; the big win on the weekend. And now practices; over-practicing, over-coaching, over-skill development, all for the purpose of trying to win the game, rather than develop skill, develop comradery, and develop character, all the things I had mentioned before.

And then, the third part of that equation, youth fitness, has been, again, sub-segmented down. What I mean by that is we're taking adult-based prescriptions — boot camps, fitness camps, yoga, spinning classes, weight training machines, and we're either building smaller scales of those machines, like fitness machines, weight training machines, spinning bikes, treadmills, etc.; we're building smaller scales of them to fit a younger person, a smaller person, and just children; or, we're just taking that adult prescription and we're kind of dumbing it down a little bit and applying it to kids.

And the reality is, and Chris, you and I have talked about this before, I'm a huge fan of the concept that something is better than nothing. I'm heartened that kids are doing anything. We have a yoga class over here, or a spinning class over here, competitive soccer game over there, that's fine. I'm happy kids are active, in general. I don't want to sound like I'm not.

But at the same time, we're looking at a society whose youth obesity rate is at an all-time high. Over 30% of the kids in this country alone are overweight. 15% or better are obese, by clinical standards. We're talking about sport participation rates that are actually at an all-time high, and that's good, but the dropout rates and burnout rates, where kids walk away from sports, are also at an all-time high. So more kids are playing sports, but they're also leaving sports at a much earlier age.

And then the final piece of that is the fitness piece. You know, Chris, I'm just reminded of that in the latter half of 2006, one of the governing bodies of fitness in our industry, IDEA, released a survey that cited youth fitness as being the second highest potential for growth in our industry over the next decade, regarding potential programming for health clubs, personal trainers, etc. But at the same time, I get interviewed for a lot of contemporary magazine and pieces regarding youth fitness, etc., and the dominating thing I keep hearing, a very recurring issue, is that although governing bodies in the fitness industry are suggesting youth fitness is going to blossom into a huge programmatic potential for all of us in this industry, health club owners, managers, directors, etc., are saying "We offer kids' fitness programs, but no one seems to come."

And so we have an odd conundrum here, where we seem to have more things available for kids, we seem to have a higher number of kids involved in sport, but you dig below those good numbers, and you see some very alarming numbers. I think the whole point of this long diatribe I'm on right now, is that we have to reclaim an age of innocence and practicality where it relates to fitness in general as a society. What you're seeing at the youth level, in terms of an over-exuberance towards competition and sport, and therefore, of dropout rate, what you're seeing at the youth level in terms of obesity and overweight concerns and nutritional factors, is nothing more than a reflection of what you're seeing at the adult level.

So whenever someone asks me how do we fix this youth obesity-youth sport-youth fitness crisis, my answer's always the same: we have to fix our own mentalities of what does fitness mean. It doesn't mean anything to take your daughter or son to a fitness class or a sport game or anything else, that is, per se, the perception, that's good; when you yourself are just sitting on the sidelines eating some Twinkies. Kids see and they do. They reflect what they see. Mentors are parents. Parents are mentors.

And so for us to really change the scope of what's going on with kids in this country and beyond, we have to claim a better understanding of physical fitness for all of us. And that's why I'm a big fan of parent/child-based programs. Parents! Get outside and kick a soccer ball around once in a while. Go to the park and create obstacle courses that your kids and you can go through for some leisurely fitness. That's how it's going to get done, Chris, and I'm a strong advocate for that.

CM: Wow, man, you cut to the chase. I had about 11 or 12 questions here, and you answered about 6 of them. That's great.

How else can we get our children to embrace and enjoy exercise? What else can we do?

BG: Well, we have to make it fun, and that's part of the critical concern I have. The reason kids are dropping out of sports is that it's not fun any more. We cloak ourselves in thinking our kids want to win the soccer game. They do because we want to. They do because we tell them they should. They do because — we make it more stressful than it really should be. So really, truly, fitness and sports should be fun.

I keep using this term — we have to reclaim our innocence. And I can talk a lot about the science of pediatric exercise; or course, I won't go too far into that in the scope of this conversation, Chris, but one of the things that really dominate, it's two words, and it's one of the most beautiful sentences, perfect phrases you could possibly imagine, and it dominates what kids should be doing from an exercise standpoint at a young age, and it's just two words called "guided discovery." All that means is that parents, coaches, trainers, whoever it is, should be creating stimulus that is fun, that is energetic, that is movement-oriented, and that kids to discover things. So we're setting up the template for not so much the rules and regulations of an exercise or a soccer game or a football game; we're putting up boundaries.

It's often referred to as "outcome stimulus" versus "form-based stimulus." What that means is we're putting together the concept. "Okay, guys, here's what I want you to do. I want you to run over there as fast as you can and touch the tree with your right hand; and then I want you to do a backpedal over in that direction and go around the cone towards the right. And then do one somersault, pick up the tennis ball, and throw it as far as you possibly can. That sound like fun? Go!" And that's youth fitness. Kids have a blast with that kind of unregulated, unstructured play; but it allows for them to develop. That's why it's called "guided discovery." You're not sitting there with a bullhorn and a whistle chastising them, saying, "That's not how you run. You run like this," and "That's not how you backpedal. You lean forward," etc.

And we're mistaken; and this is true of our own industry as well, Chris. A lot of elite personal trainers and elite strength coaches working with adult populations, and even elite athletes, think that the kind of technical maintenance that us as trainers provide to that elite clientele in terms of exactly how to squat, exactly how to power clean, exactly how to produce and absorb force, that's what we have to start teaching kids at a young age, and it couldn't be farther from the truth, from a scientific perspective. It's guided discovery. Create fun things for them to do, and let them learn. Don't overcritique it; don't overcoach it. Get some positive suggestions once in a while. Give a lot of high-fives to let them know you think they're doing a great job, and the key, then — and this is my favorite phrase of all time — allow kids to develop a lifelong love for physical activity using that exact template. And when they do, the sky's the limit. Physical activity will always be a part of their lives, because you helped them develop a love for it. Does that make sense?

CM: That make perfect sense. What ages is it okay to get kids involved in exercise programs. Like, how old should a kid be before he can do push-ups or pull-ups or life weights? Do have any kind of input on that?

BG: That's a great question. I think that things like that, strength training in general, get really confused and over-mythed when it comes to pediatrics and stuff.

Here's a general rule: when it comes to strength developments or strength training for kids, if you're in the ages of 1 month through 2, 3, 4 years old, kids really are on their own. As a natural course of the way their central nervous system works, they're going to be exploring naturally. Now I know a lot of pediatric physical therapists who have taught me a great deal of how you can help encourage that. Encourage kids to stand and walk. Put kids on their bellies when they're babies rather than their backs so they're forced to be in a position of pushing themselves around, straining their necks to look up and all around, because that's what babies do, and that's what helps build a strong functional body from even infancy.

But around the ages of 5 and 6 years old, and there's a lot of factors in there that you don't have to go into, things like biological maturity and emotional maturity and stuff, but around that 5 to 6 year old frame, you're looking at being able to elicit strength development. I don't really call it strength training, but strength development; and that really comes with just a few factors; running, jumping and hopping, skipping, climbing, crawling, and technique development. Those six things are basically what encompass strength development in kids.

So what does that mean? Put them on monkey bars; show them patterns on how to get from one side of the monkey bars to the other, and help them and encourage them to reproduce what you're showing them and ask them to make up patterns of their own, so you're stimulating them and helping them be part of the process. Climb tress; do things that are very systemic in nature. Run up the hill and give me a big high-five, good boy or good girl, that kind of thing. Jumping and hopping — teach kids to jump rope. Teach them how to do A-skips or low skips or high skips; and this is all, or course, in the conformity of fun. Obstacles courses, relay races — but use those six paradigms, all the things that I just mentioned in the form of fun physical fitness, and if you do that, you're going to develop a very strong, very coordinated, very mobile, very torso-based strengthened young person, and that's going to extend their whole life.

What a lot of people don't understand is that — this is true of academics, it's true of physicality, it's true of a lot of things — what we're exposed to early in life is what we become good at through the rest of our lives, and that's because of the way the central nervous system works. There's a great deal of plasticity, which means adaptability, in the central nervous system when we're young; and so if we learn to skip, if we learn to climb trees and develop all kinds of good systemic strength in doing that kind of stuff and run obstacle courses and jump rope and run up hills and stuff like that.

If we learn and they're exposed to all of that at a young age, we develop very strong bodies for a healthy, flexible, mobile body, and we have those skills as skills forever, if that makes sense. And then, pursuant to that, you talk about push-ups and even weight training as well, let comment on those, quickly. It's a mistake — it's a sincere mistake to force kids into activity that they might not be ready for yet, from a structural strength standpoint. So push-ups can be one of those things. Push-ups aren’t easy; and you're looking for a certain way of being able to perform push-ups so you're not hurting the cervical spine, the lumbar spine — and I'm sure, Chris, you've seen this a million times, people who are not quite as strong through the torso, they look like a "C" literally in their lower back. We don't want kids exposed to that kind of improper stimulus on a regular basis when their bodies are really just in a stage of formation.

So, rather than look at doing push-ups, look at making sure your kids are systemically strong in general by doing all of those big activities that I just talked about; and if you do that over a couple of years, you're going to have strong kids who can do push-ups like that, in a breeze, by the time they've had just a couple years of throwing balls around and running up hills and climbing trees and monkey bars and going through obstacle courses and that kind of thing.

I don't mean to be so long-winded; the last part was weight training. It's a myth that kids shouldn't be able to produce scores or life weights, and it's going to somehow stunt their growth, or it's going to be disadvantageous. The reality is that it's not true; it's an overblown concern when you factor in that 5-pound dumbbell in your hand has much less of a force capacity problem that does, say, jumping up in the air in a soccer game and slamming a ball off your head and then landing back down again. The ground reactive forces of that are exponentially higher and potentially more dangerous than picking up a 5-pound weight. But for some reason, we still think weight training kids in a big no-no. The reality is is that I want my young athlete and just the children I work with as well, I want them to understand how to lift weights, not so much load them, not so much do 3 sets of 15; that doesn't concern me. I'm talking about the form and technique of how to lift. And the best time of life to learn new skills so that they become skills forever is in the early stags of life. So I usually start teaching kids how to squat, how to do push-ups, how to even do things like high pulls, exercises that preface Olympic lifts, even, which is broom handles or 5-pound weighted bars. I usually start that around 9 or 10 years old, because that's when I found kids are a little bit more mature; they listen to instruction; and after going through the programs that I work in; they're still very systemically strong to learn how to then produce force in a squat or a front squat or overhead squat or that kind of thing.

CM: What's the current state of the physical education programs in our schools?

BG: Well, it's not great. As I mentioned before, budgetary cuts; a lot of downgrading to just basic games like kickball, football, and basketball, which in and of themselves is fine, but not optimal. What I find a lot is a lot of teachers who really want to do the best thing, but don't necessarily know how to take 40 or 50 kids through a productive training session or a P.E. session within a 45-minute or 60-minute timeframe, and that's what I find to be the biggest problem, is that teachers don't know what to do. So that's why we're playing kickball, basketball, etc.

So I would comment that the state of P.E. in this country is not a great one, but it's not because of a lack of initiative or desire from P.E. teachers in general. I think it's a general lack of know-how, and so some of the things we're doing with the IYCA are hoping to help that issue by educating teachers nationwide through a nationally-driven program on how exactly they should be looking at P.E. and they evolve it, from elementary school all the way up through high school.

CM: What are some of the things you guys are doing, if you don't mind?

BG: Not at all. We're working on initiatives with other organizations. There's a wonderful organization down in
Virginia called Functional Fitness For Kids, and we just today, as a matter of fact, agreed to terms on working with them on a project nationwide. They do a great job of teaching P.E. teachers specifically, and almost exclusively in that part of America, although they certainly have a great deal of interest in other parts of the United States from P.E. teachers and school boards of education to have their program be fundamentally brought into other school boards, but they do a lot of work in the Southeast, Virginia, Maryland, etc. What they do, and we love their concept of the IYCA, is they really teach P.E. teachers how to take 40, 50, 60 kids in an hour and move them, multi-directionally and multi-planar; keep them moving for an hour while honoring sensitive periods of development, and that's the key. We're very fortunate and honored to be working with Functional Fitness For Kids, and that's our first major step into the physical educational realm in this country.

CM: Sweet. How can we get our youth to embrace health and fitness as a way of life over the long haul? I know a lot of people, good sports and worked out in high school and stuff like that, then they drop the ball once they get out of high school or get a little bit older. What's the key to getting the youth to embrace this stuff and just take it down the road with them for the long haul?

BG: Excellent question. The key is fun. It goes back to that whole plasticity comment. Really and truly, Chris, what you're exposed to in your early years of life is with you forever; if not, a long time. That's the key. That's true of emotions, that's true of mentality, that's true of academic experiences, academic exposures, and physicality as well. And that's, again, because of the classic nature of the nervous system.

And so, if we're looking — and I hate to say it, because I like any initiative towards physical education — but there's been a lot of hoopla in the media recently about a TV show where they're developing boot camps for children. These are overweight kids who don't enjoy physical activity. They hate it; it's not part of their "fun radar," and that's probably from a lot of deep-rooted emotional issues. They're overweight; they're a little clumsy; they perhaps get picked on; they're insecure; and so what do we do as a society? We embrace a TV show where they bring in big, muscular-bound drill sergeants to come in and try and break these kids physically and mentally, and just run them through all kinds of drills and exercises, and almost even talk down to them. I was watching a quote where the trainer said, "Don't be so scared. You guys are going to survive this. At least, some of you will." Come on! These are children who don't enjoy physical activity.

So, I hope what I'm saying now gets out to people, Chris, because although as a society we may embrace that kind of drill sergeant-esque ridiculousness, I can tell you conclusively, a year from now, when the lights and cameras stopped rolling, those kids are going to be right back where they are now, not enjoying physical activity because it was made to be a chore and an un-fun experience. I'm 33 years old, so my childhood really wasn't that long ago. Did you do anything when you were a kid that you didn't think was fun, by choice? Of course not! All the things we didn't think were fun — in my case, homework, chores, carrying the groceries in for my mom — I hated doing all that stuff. So, A) I tried to get out of it as best I could, and B) I resisted it. So whenever you're talking about how do we have kids embrace physical activity, it should become part of their lives, part of their culture, for the rest of their lives, you have to make it fun. You have to make it something they look forward to do; something they can't wait until next time.

And when you do that, you develop that lifelong love, and then the adult-based excuses we hear a lot of now, Chris — I know you own a personal training company, so you may be exposed to this a lot more than I do — but adults seem to day, "I don't have time." Well, how come 30% of the population has all kinds of time to exercise, and the other 30% have no time at all? The reality is when it's something that you enjoy doing, you make time. So again, if you enjoy it, you make time. How do we make physical culture part of every child's life forever? You make it fun. If it becomes engaging, stimulating, and something they want to do, they will find time to do it the rest of their lives, guaranteed.

CM: Brian, that's a great answer. Your passion comes right through the phone, man.

BG: I thought I was just talking too much again. I do that sometimes.

CM: No, no. What is Kaizen, and how can we apply it to exercise?

BG: That's a good question. Kaizen is a concept and a philosophy I use a lot in my own life, and I think, Chris, you and I have had some conversations about it, and I've written about it in some of my online pieces.

Kaizen is a term, a Japanese word of origin, and it essentially means "long, slow progression" or "constant improvement," but not being impatient for it. It's really a confluence of several different things, but the bottom line of it means that every day in every way, you're getting better and better, and you're patient in that process. You know the process is all there is; and I think in
North America, we tend to look for the goal, for the attainment of something.

I can speak back to television culture again. You look at "Celebrity Fit Club" and this new TV show for overweight kids. We're always looking at what's your goal; let's drop 30 pounds or 14% of your bodyweight. It's not about the goal, it's not about attaining anything. It's about the process, and enjoying the process, and understanding that life is a process. We are very "here and now", "hurry up and wait" kind of culture, and kaizen really is embracing the prospect that every single day, I get better; and every single day, I'm one step closer to where I want to be, eventually, and being okay with that. And that's the whole process.

I just finished writing a book called The Youth Obesity Solution, and I have yet to release it. I'll probably release it in 2008, but I wrote a chapter about the Kaizen mentality, and in it I discussed specifically weight loss as it relates to Kaizen mentality. When you are in search of a goal, and you drive after that goal — I call it "The Chase," when you're chasing after the goal with all your might and all your energy and all your focus — doesn't it feel and seem like your goal just keeps getting farther and farther and farther away? That's the reality. So weight loss can't be a measure of attaining something. It can't be a measure of "When I get to this point, I'll be happy," or "When I get to this point, I'll be finished." Kaizen mentality says to enjoy the process; enjoy the experience; be happy that today, you're one step closer to where you want to be, where you're going to be. But don't micro-manage the process. Don't get stressed about the process. Things of value take time, and that is really what Kaizen mentality is really all about.

CM: Another great answer. I know we've been touching on this the whole time, when it comes to fun and Kaizen, but how important is mindset when it comes to getting in shape and staying in shape?

BG: It's everything, Chris, and our society has made it about the physicality, and really, the physicality is the by-product. It's the secondary part of the whole fitness-weight loss-health equation. The mentality is everything. It's a matter of being happy where you are, knowing you want to be better or getting better or you are getting better every single day, but it's being grateful and happy for where you are right now. That’s the key; and when you can maintain — maintain that degree of calm, that degree of bliss, "I'm perfectly happy with who I am, where I am, the fact that I'm getting better in small increments every single day" — when you can truly embrace that concept, your goals come to you faster than lightning; that's the reality.

We get in the way of our own goal creation in hope of attainment. We try to push too hard. We try and drive too fast. We don't respect the laws of the universe, the laws of God. They say that things take time. Nothing of value comes today. It comes from a blissful pursuit and a grateful pursuit, day by day by day. And the next thing you know, you wake up and you're there! So the mentality is everything.

We have made a huge mistake in
North America. "8-Minute Abs"; "60 Days to 60 Pounds"; "10 Inches in 10 Days"; that's how we sell the public. And I understand why people buy it; it makes perfect sense. It's an emotional sell. But we're doing such a disservice to go that direction. We need to allow people or give people permission to say it's okay where you are. It's great where you are; enjoy the process; let's get better day by day and not count the days. Let's now worry about that. Let's be grateful for where we are, and know we're going to be where we're going to be, and we'll get there.

It sounds very loosey-goosey, Chris, and it's says very - like that guy's full of it, that kind of situation — but the reality is, the vast majority of CEOs of major Fortune 500/Fortune 100 companies are classically Type B personalities. Type A personalities are very hard driving, here and now, go-go-go, get this done kind of people. Type B personalities are very "This is great where we are. Look at us! Look how great we are! This is the direction we should go next." That's by the fun strategy, and get there day by day. So the top businesspeople in the world are like that, but I think we think they're not. I think we think that the only way to achieve something in life is to drive after it with all of our might, and it's not. That's when we start getting in the way of the process.

So, I hope that all made sense, but the key is, in the mentality, be happy where you are. Be grateful for where you are, and know you're getting better, step by step, second by second, day by day. That takes all the pressure off.

CM: How can we teach this to our children, these mindset principles?

BG: From a young age, same kind of thing. Let's stop shooting for the win on Saturday. Let's shoot for the "How did you play? Did you enjoy yourself?" You know, we don't have to do it necessarily in specific lessons, but in perhaps non-verbal communication. "It's okay if you didn't win, Jimmy; how did you play? Did you enjoy yourself? That's what really matters, right?" That kind of thing.

I talk about my Youth Obesity Solution book, that the youth obesity epidemic really isn’t an epidemic, because the odds that kids who are overweight or obese are going to suffer some kind of health concern due to that condition immediately are very remote. Certainly there are times and places where there is danger zone and some kids are at risk for immediate problems, but more often than not, kids who are overweight or obese, their health concerns are about 15 or 20 years away. And yet, we're trying to bang them into a quick fix now, when the reality is, we have time. We have time to make them enjoy physical activity and a healthy lifestyle, thereby making youth obesity or making their particular problem with overweight not really a problem at all.

See, when we define something as a problem, Chris, it becomes a problem. When we define it as "Well, no big deal; let's fix it," then it becomes a no-big-deal we can fix. So how do you teach that to kids? You take the stress off of them, in sport, in physical activity, in their nutrition, in their eating. Of course you implement good, healthy lifestyle changes. You adopt a family-wide approach to improve eating, to quitting smoking, to daily physical activity, and you enjoy it. And by nature of that, they're going to enjoy it. And guess what happens next? The pounds come off; everyone's eating better; everyone's de-stressed, everyone's sleeping better at night. A year and a half later, the entire family's lost collectively 800 pounds, no one's overweight anymore, and they all love the activity and the nutrition that they'd adopted for themselves.

So I don't know if it comes in lessons as much as it comes in non-verbal communication, just making sure they understand to de-stress; nothing's a problem in life. It just is. We make it a problem, and we have a choice; make it a problem or make it a solution.

CM: Brian, I agree 100% with that. This has been an awesome interview, and I really appreciate your time today. I think everybody should listen to this, and especially parents and teachers and P.E. coaches and anyone involved with our youth at any level.

Where can people learn more about the IYCA and what you do?

BG: The best place to reference me is at my home site. It's www.developingathletics.com. And of course, the International Youth Conditioning Association is www.iyca.org.

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