Meeting #19: Fitness Fun badge

Fitness Fun badge (FF)

Discovering You: Stay Fit and Healthy (DY3)

Beyond You: Try New Things (BY3)

Ever have one of those meetings where things you expect to happen don't happen? We had one of those nights. We'd invited a fitness instructor to come teach the girls yoga and work on the Fitness Fun badge. When she didn't show up, we had to improvise! Luckily, we are active leaders and could muddle our way through the badge--it's just always nicer when you can have someone knowledgeable come and teach the girls!

We asked the girls to come to the meeting dressed to work out, and to bring a water bottle and a yoga mat or beach towel. I brought extra beach towels for the girls who would inevitably forget.

6:30-7:00--While waiting for our non-existent guest to arrive, we moved the tables out of the way to give us a big space for working out and the girls enjoyed having some "unstructured" time.

7:00-8:15:
We started with a warm-up--neck circles, shoulder shrugs, arm circles, ankle circles. (FF#3)

Then we moved on to stretching. Biceps, triceps, quads, glutes. (FF#4)

I've taken kickboxing classes, so we went through some of the moves for that--jabs, hooks, upper cuts, front kicks, back kicks, side kicks, speed bag. (FF#7, BY3#3)

Then another leader knew some yoga, so she took them through some of the easier yoga poses. Some girls knew some moves so they tried those as well. (FF#7, BY3#3)

Then we did squats, lunges, push-ups, planks, crunches and sit-ups. There was a lot of complaining for this one! We tried to walk around and make sure they could do the exercises properly, but if they were having lots of trouble, we didn't insist. (FF#6)

Then as they were lying on their mats/towels, we brainstormed with them how they could increase the physical activity in their daily lives. Ideas they came up with--doing exercises during commercial breaks while watching tv, playing running games at recess instead of just walking around, asking parents to park farther away from the door when shopping, walking or biking to school. (FF#1)

That covered 5 topics from the badge. (DY3#6)

Their exercise journals are due back the next week, and that will cover the sixth topic, which means they won't get the badge until they bring pack their journals! (FF#2)

8:15-8:30--Clean-up and closing