Workouts for kids

The nine shelves

• First Moves (6). Your very first workouts. Mostly animals. Start with Animal Parade and Red Light, Green Light Squats.
• Get Your Heart Going (7). Out of breath in a good way. Start with Up and Down the Hallway and Jump Rope Minute.
• Strong Like a Bear (7). Push, pull, hold on. Start with Push and Pull and Plank Party.
• Jump, Hop, Land (4). Up in the air, and down soft. Start with Land Like a Cat and Hopscotch Rounds.
• Carry, Lift, Throw (6). Pick something up the right way. Start with Ball and Back and The Carry.
• Bend and Stretch (4). Slow, long, and nobody is counting. Start with Morning Stretch and After Sitting All Day.
• Two of You (3). You need one other person. Start with You Go, I Go and Mirror Workout.
• A Whole Class (3). For a teacher with a hall full of kids. Start with Everybody Moves and The Whole Hall.
• Three Minutes, No Gear (4). Short, quiet, and anywhere. Start with Three Minute Shake-Out and Carpet Three.

By how much time there is

15 are eight minutes or less, warm-up and cool-down included: Animal Parade, Red Light, Green Light Squats, Five Little Monkeys, Teddy Bear Carry and Three Minute Shake-Out. Short counts. A few minutes done most days beats an hour done once a month, every time.

By what is in the house

5 need nothing at all: Animal Parade, Push and Pull, Plank Party, Waddle and Kick and Desk Side Three. 31 are quiet — no jumping, no stamping, nothing dropped — which is the list to use if somebody lives below: Animal Parade, Red Light, Green Light Squats, Teddy Bear Carry, Three Minute Shake-Out and Carpet Three.

The four levels, and what changes

The youngest level has no timer and nothing to beat, on purpose. Intensity is the last thing to arrive, not the first — and a coach in a room can judge a child's readiness in a way a screen cannot.

What a workout actually looks like

1. Warm up — three to five easy movements, about 25 seconds each.
2. Learn the moves — any movement the child has not opened before gets its film, its cues and the common mistake drawn, before a clock exists.
3. The workout — one film, one enormous number, the movement's name said aloud at every change, and a three-two-one countdown. A child on the floor cannot read a screen, so the voice carries it.
4. How did it go? — their time or their count, kept on their own device, with their own best and three faces for easy, just right or hard.
5. A game — for anyone under 4th grade, and it has no score at all.
6. Cool down — two to four slow stretches.

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 long should a workout for kids be?

Shorter than most people think. In this Gym a preschooler's is three to eight minutes of moving, a 6-to-9-year-old's six to twelve, a 9-to-12-year-old's ten to twenty, and a 12-to-14-year-old's fifteen to twenty-five. Those are ceilings, and every number on every workout page is worked out from the exercises in it rather than typed by hand.

Can kids do strength training?

They can learn the shapes, and that is worth doing early, because everybody picks things up all their life. What the research is clear about is that it needs qualified supervision, equipment that cannot fall on a child, and technique before load. A screen cannot supervise, so this Gym has no barbell, dumbbell or bench at all, and keeps the load to a ball or a bag with a book or two from 3rd grade. More for grown-ups.

What if there is no room?

Most of the Gym needs a bit of floor the size of a child lying down with their arms out. The front page has a chip for that, and another for how many minutes there are.

Where do these workouts 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.