This big fitness craze is targeting a small audience.
Aviator Sports and Events Center will offering kids’ classes for CrossFit — an anaerobic workout designed to build and tone muscles — starting in February.
The eight-week course, available for grades first through ninth, is a great way to get sedentary students moving — and the sessions are all about having fun, according to the center’s CrossFit coach.
“Children nowadays don’t move like they used to. Now, they sit on their iPads — that is all they do, all day long,” said Laura Henschel, who also coaches adult classes, adding that the kids’ classes will be less structured than adult classes and include more games. “If they’re having fun, they don’t realize they’re working out.”
The 45-minute classes won’t include CrossFit’s trademark weight lifting, Henschel said. Instead, the students will perform exercises simply using their own body weight. The classes, which will also include nutrition education, will be divided based on age groups. Monday sessions will be for youngsters in first and second grade, Wednesday classes will be for students in sixth through ninth grade, and Friday sessions will be for kids in third through fifth grade.
But Henschel said students who are more advanced or want to amp up their sweat session can switch to a different age group with their parents’ approval.
“It is all going to be on case-by-case basis,” she said.
She said students of all skill levels will be able to perform the CrossFit exercises.
“With kids, you start really slow, because you have all their lives to get them into CrossFit,” said Henschel, adding that she ultimately wants to encourage kids to adopt a healthy lifestyle. “Kids sit in chairs now for hours on end — our bodies aren’t meant to sit in chairs.”
If the classes are a success, she said the center may offer another eight-week course of CrossFit for kids.
“I’m really excited to see how this is going to go,” she said.
CrossFit Kids at Aviator Sports and Events Center [3159 Flatbush Ave. off the Belt Parkway in Marine Park, (718) 758–7557, www.aviatorsportsnyc.com]. Begins Feb. 2. $75 for the eight-week course, $15 for a drop-in class.
