Exercises for kids

All 70 exercises for kids

Move your own body

You are the only thing you lift.

Move something else

Pick a thing up, carry it, throw it, put it down.

Go somewhere

Run, hop, climb, skip: get your heart going.

Get bendy

Reach further than you did yesterday.

Hold still and aim

The hardest moves are sometimes the slowest ones.

36 of them need nothing at all

Squat, Squat hold, Lunge, Push-Up, Knee Push-Up, Plank, Side plank and Hollow hold and 28 more need no equipment of any kind — just a bit of floor the size of a child lying down with their arms out.

63 of them are quiet enough for a flat

Nothing jumps, nothing stamps, nothing drops: Squat, Chair stand, Squat hold, Lunge, Step-up and Push-Up and 57 more. If somebody lives downstairs, the Gym's front page has a Quiet chip that shows only these.

The ten things fitness is made of

Being fit does not mean being good at one thing. Fitness School explains the ten parts of it, and the most interesting fact about them: four get better because a child's body changes, four because their brain learns, and two need both.

Easier and harder: every exercise fits the child

The right version of a move is the hardest one a child can still do properly — one step past that and they are practising the wrong shape, which makes them worse at it rather than better. So a wall push-up is not a lesser push-up; for the child it fits, it is the correct one. Every move page lists both directions, and every jumping move has a no-jump swap and, where it makes sense, a seated one.

Is this safe?

There is no barbell, dumbbell, kettlebell, bench or bar anywhere in the Gym — the words are not even in its data, so a future workout cannot reach for one. The heaviest thing a child ever picks up is a ball, a towel, or a backpack with a book or two in it, and only from 3rd grade; nothing goes overhead with anything in the hands below 4th grade, and nothing anywhere puts weight on a head or a neck. The two youngest levels have no clock to race. Every workout that leaves the ground teaches landing first, in its own warm-up, and every workout page carries the same five stop signals — dizzy, chest hurts, can't catch your breath, a sharp pain in one spot, feeling sick — read aloud before any clock starts.

Why there is nothing here about weight

The Gym never mentions weight, shape, size or calories, and never suggests eating less. About sixty of those words are refused in the code itself, in every line a child reads, including the spoken ones. What it says instead is strong, fast, springy, steady and bendy — and that food is fuel.

Questions

How much exercise does a child need?

About an hour a day of moderate-to-vigorous activity for 6-to-17-year-olds, and it does not have to be in one go — the 2018 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans count ten minutes here and twenty there. On at least three days a week some of it should be muscle-strengthening and some bone-strengthening. For 3-to-5-year-olds the advice is simply to be active throughout the day.

Which exercise should a child start with?

A squat, and then landing. Squat is the shape behind sitting, standing and jumping, and Jump and Land is the one most worth learning carefully, because landing softly is what keeps a springy child in one piece.

Can a child exercise every day?

Moving every day is good. Doing the hardest thing every day is not, because the getting-stronger part happens on the rest days, mostly during sleep. Mix a hard one, an easy one and some stretches.

Where do these exercises come from?

The way this section thinks about fitness — ten general physical skills, three ways to move, "do it right, do it right every time, then do it fast", and ending a session with a game — comes from CrossFit's published training model and its CrossFit Kids program. Peabody is not affiliated with them. The safety rules here are our own, and in several places stricter.

Nothing is sent anywhere

The Gym is free, with no ads and no sign-up. There is no camera, no pose detection and no leaderboard. What your child has done and their own best times stay on their own device and are never sent anywhere, so there is nothing to lose and no account to make.