Mercy Community HealthCare , located at 1113 Murfreesboro Road, Suite 319 in Franklin will bring you quick health tips for you and your family every Saturday and Monday. Mercy Community Healthcare provides sick and urgent care, counseling and social services, chronic illness management, and psychiatry services to patients of all ages, both insured and uninsured. If you have any questions or need assistance call 615-790-0567.
Today’s article is by Nora Krug Staff editor, Book World
The gym has long been a kid-free oasis, a place where adults could burn off the stresses of daily life — including those brought on by children — along with a few hundred calories. If there were children at the gym, they were confined to its on-site day care, where they could play with toys, draw or watch TV.
Not anymore. Increasingly, local gyms are courting children, offering a variety of classes and activities that allow kids, too, to work out — if not on the elliptical machine next to you.
The gym “is the perfect place to bring kids and families together in a healthy, happy and friendly environment,” says Courtney Connors, who has been running the Results for Kids program at the Results Gym in Capitol Hill for about two years.
“It’s a win-win,” says Alicia Trabert of Bethesda, whose daughters Kira, 5, and Brooke, 3, take a “Mix-It-Up Zumba” class at the South Bethesda Washington Sports Club. “With both kids in it, I get to work out, too.” When her kids come to the gym, she says, “they don’t want to watch TV at the day care; they want to work out.”
And so they do. At a recent class, the two girls, along with a handful of others, mimicked the adult version of the popular Zumba workout, jumping in sync to the music, as their teacher, Libby Linden Rubin, led them through a series of exercises — jumping over low hurdles and on bosu balls, running through ladder ropes and tunnels. The class, which took place in the gym’s windowed main studio, was a rousing mix of yoga and dance. “Shake it, shake it,” Rubin enthused, as the girls, dressed in semi-workout clothes (Uggs were okay) wiggled their way through an hour-long routine that left them sweaty and smiling. “They have no idea they are getting such a great workout,” Trabert says.
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