Getting Kids Moving to Live More with Dr. Amy Bantham

This paradox , as I view it , is the trust , interaction and communication gap that exists between fitness professionals and our medical community . This podcast is all about closing off that gap by disseminating the latest , most evidence-based and most engaging information in the health sciences . And to do that , in episode 122 , I'm joined again by Amy Bantham .

Now , you might remember Amy , from episode 33 , where we talked about making health clubs an essential community resource , which we put out over two years ago . This episode is kind of an extension on that concept , with a twist . It's about Amy's new book , move to Live More . In this book she talks to 20 thought leaders in the youth physical activity space .

Now you might be thinking that in the fitness industry we don't do a lot with youth physical activity and , as we're going to point out in this conversation , that might be the real opportunity in what Amy's talking about in this conversation . That might be the real opportunity in what Amy's talking about in this book .

The youth are underserved or , in some cases , not served at all demographic by our industry . Yet there's a lot of demand for physical activity and movement-oriented services that are non-sport or athletic-based with our youth and in this conversation Amy's going to make the business case as to why this is such an important population to consider how to engage with .

But she's also going to provide some actionable steps that you can take to consider how to effectively engage with this population . Any information we'd like to share with you from today's episode can be found on the show notes page , that's by going to wellnessparadoxpodcom . Forward slash episode 122 . Please enjoy this conversation with Amy Bantham .

Today we're delighted to be joined again by my good friend , amy Bantham . Amy , thank you so much for joining us again .

But on the chance that people didn't hear that episode , can you just briefly give us an idea of your background to provide some context for our discussion today ?

I've been teaching group exercise since the mid-90s and I'm a certified group exercise instructor , personal trainer and health coach , and that was really my entry into the industry . I have played many roles in the industry . I've played many roles in the industry . I worked at IHRSA for 11 years , working on advocacy and on health promotion , health policy .

I helped them start their 501 , the IHRSA Foundation , which is focused on helping health and fitness centers open their doors to people with chronic disease and disability .

I went back to school in 2017 and got my doctorate public health and my dissertation topic was around what you and I talk about an awful lot , which was integrating healthcare and health and fitness , and as part of my dissertation , I launched Move to Live More , which integrated those two sectors and added in the community sectors .

And so for the past four years , I've been working with for-profit companies , not-for-profits , with foundations , with organizations that are working to get people moving .

So you really touch , you know , multiple sectors in our industry , which is why I always enjoy our conversations so much .

This conversation is actually a different one , and it's about the book that you just released , titled and I have it right here for those of you that are watching titled Move to Live More , the name of your company , and so this book I found to be a very , very interesting read , particularly from my perspective as an exercise professional .

But why don't you tell us a little bit more about what inspired you to write this book ?

I was interviewing thought leaders in the physical activity and youth sports space and a lot of the themes that came out were around addressing physical inactivity among kids and I really honed in on three areas and I took a whole child health approach when I wrote the book and the three areas were physical health , mental health and academic development .

And that was during the pandemic , with my family and my three kids in my family , in my community , trying to get our kids moving , trying to get our kids back to school so they could be connected to their peers , so they could be back in PE . I really saw how much kids were really suffering .

Suffering and I think we've seen a lot since the pandemic ended is that kids really need movement . We had obesity levels skyrocket . We had physical inactivity levels skyrocket . They need it for their physical health . But we also see the rates of anxiety and stress and depression .

And then we see the pandemic learning loss and I talk about this in the book and I use my own community as an example . My kids were out of school for 13 months . We have 13 months of math loss , math learning loss in our community . So they didn't gain anything during that time and we have about six months of reading loss .

And so really thinking about and I frame this as a problem , but the book really frames it as innovative solutions for getting kids moving and I tried to .

As a researcher myself , I wanted to include research but I really first and foremost wanted it to be a guide , an actionable guide for anyone who works with kids so parents , caregivers , coaches , teachers , fitness professionals for how and why to get kids moving , for better physical health , mental health and academic development .

I think white papers and research are very important , but I think both you and I , who come from a similar background as a frontline exercise professional , we really value things that we can read and learn and then apply to the problems that we see on a day-by-day basis .

And I also find it interesting that , like most great things in life , it comes from problems you're facing in your own life , in your own household , and you weren't alone during the pandemic , certainly with the challenges that you talked about facing .

They weren't moving enough before school , during school , after school on the weekends , and so I got involved in my district wellness committee and focus . So to me it's a bottom-up and a top-down approach . So to me it's a bottom-up and a top-down approach . So the grassroots perspective .

But also we banded together and worked to change our district wellness policy to support more outdoor movement in our school systems . The pandemic they were simply exacerbated by the pandemic . And again to your point , we are on the front lines .

We are constantly trying to find ways to help everyone in our networks get kids moving , because kids who move become adults who move and so instilling healthy habits if you think about bang for the buck in terms of healthcare costs , if you think about the importance of habit formation we really need to start early , and so I really wanted to have a roadmap to

the parents and caregivers and coaches and teachers , everyone that I've talked with over the last couple of years , who feel so alone in well , how do I get kids to put down their phones and go outdoors ? How do I get my school to offer more movement in school and just really trying to ?

One , let them know they're not alone and two , that there are 50 tips and 50 takeaways in the book for how to get started today .

But you said something that I think is really important and you know , as you know , this podcast is largely listened to by exercise professionals , and exercise professionals , broadly speaking , don't do the best job of serving the kind of the extremes of the spectrum , like we do really well with people like between the ages of , you know , 25 and 50 maybe , but as

you start to get to the tails of that distribution , particularly on the younger tail of that distribution , we don't do the best job of serving those for a number of reasons . And what you said that I think is so important to highlight is that , you know , active kids become active adults .

So , if nothing else , just the thing that we're talking about here is so important is these are your future members and these are your future clients . The less physically literate our kids are , the less likely they are to walk through our doors in the future .

So that is certainly one reason for fitness professionals and exercise professionals to really hear this conversation . But I kind of want to hear from you , just from a broad perspective , why should fitness and exercise professionals care about a book like this , which it seems like maybe this is for teachers and coaches , but maybe not exercise professionals .

After reading it I would disagree , but I think that it's important for you to state from your perspective .

Last week I interviewed a woman who heads up the Sporting Goods Industry Association worldwide and she frames physical inactivity levels among kids as an existential threat to the sporting goods industry . And I think that because kids who don't move don't wear sneakers and workout gear right and use the equipment .

So I think that's a really important way for us as fitness professionals to look at that . Kids who don't move don't consume programming and services targeted to kids and they don't grow up to be kids who consume programming and services offered by our sector . So I think there's a really important business case for this .

And then I also think we as individual fitness professionals why is this important ? And I was thinking about this in terms of we play so many different roles as fitness professionals . Right , we're instructors , so when we're working with kids , what we do is really important for safety , teaching them proper form .

It's really important for teaching them about these habits and how to follow through on these habits , which will put them into the pipeline to being these adults in their 20s to 50s that we serve so well , and maybe , if they're served well between 20s and 50s , we'll figure out how to serve them well on that other tail end . We're role models for them .

So , thinking about and I talk about this in the book there's a lot of talk right now , somewhat surprising to me that we're surprised that kids being on their phones and behind screens for up to nine hours a day is impacting their health , their mental health . Shocking , shocking , shocking , shocking .

And really thinking about how we can be role models who put down our phones and work with kids to get them moving , both indoors and outdoors , how we can play a role in helping to connect them , to reconnect them to their peers . And there's less of a role for fitness professionals , maybe in creating unstructured , unsupervised outdoor time .

I think a lot of that comes down to the family unit .

But I think if kids are getting active through and I work with brick and mortar clients who offer afterschool programming for kids and see that as really important , not only , I guess , taking a whole family approach to what they offer , and so the health club member who's the adult is happy because their kids are being served I also worked in my community to try

to broker an agreement between the public school system , which was moving from offering a lot of outdoor active programming to not really having the staff to offer any , and is there an opportunity for public schools to partner with health and fitness centers to offer programming ?

So again back to this market and business case and this imperative for getting kids moving . But I do think that we , when you look at the National Physical Activity Guidelines , kids need 60 minutes a day of aerobic and muscle strengthening and bone strengthening .

And fitness professionals have such an important role for that instructor role , for really teaching what is aerobic activity , what's moderate , what's vigorous , what's muscle strengthening , what's bone strengthening . How can we do each of these safely and effectively ? So I think there's a tremendous opportunity for fitness professionals .

As many of you know , the wellness paradox is all about closing off the trust , interaction and communication gap between fitness professionals and the medical community , and no organization does that better than the Medical Fitness Association . They are the professional member association for the medical fitness industry .

This is the industry that integrates directly with healthcare in many facilities throughout the entire country . The MFA is your go-to source for all things medical fitness . They provide newsletters , webinars . They even have standards and guidelines for medical fitness facilities .

They do events around the entire country and , most importantly , they are one of the more engaging networks in the entire fitness industry . I personally have benefited from the network that I've developed through the Medical Fitness Association and I highly recommend that all of you that are interested in solving the wellness paradox engage with the MFA .

To find out more about the Medical Fitness Association , you can go to their website , medicalfitnessorg . That's medicalfitnessorg . Now back to today's episode . Yeah , it's really interesting and it's funny . We're having this conversation now .

I had a conversation with a member at my facility this is actually just over the weekend and he said to me he said I've just got back into exercising . You know , when I was younger , the high school I went to only had exercise opportunities for the jocks , for the athletes .

And you know , as we've and this was a gentleman probably in , I'm going to say , his early to mid thirties , and over time we've kind of engineered physical education out of schools for a number of reasons , which is a separate , very sad conversation to have .

And you know , it just kind of struck me in that conversation that you know that is more true now than it ever has been . Like if you're an athlete there's a lot of opportunities for you to exercise , you know , in and around your school day . But if you're not , that's become progressively less and less and less over time .

So in some cases health clubs as a community resource are maybe some of the only places that children have the opportunity to have structured activity .

However , they define athlete as someone who moves , and I think that foundational skills development is really critical and there is a tremendous opportunity to try to fill in that gap and I talk about on my podcast and I talk about it in the book , where I have some guests who were athletes from very early on and pursue that passion by becoming a fitness

professional . I also have people who hated PE and I talk about this in the book . Being picked last , I certainly fall into that camp . I certainly fall into that camp and because of that , wanting to help the insufficient and I love this chapter from learning how to manage and navigate risk in a managed risk environment .

It's really really important and this is all . Every kid should have the opportunity to do this , not just kids who are , as you say , jocks .

So can you find a couple of specific areas to drill down on that you think would be most useful to our audience of fitness professionals that are listening ?

lot . She works in the New York City public school system and supporting organization system and offers these programs to kids and really pairs this foundational skills development with positivity , self-affirmations , and that is absolutely baked in .

I think a key theme in Zing for Kids which winds its way throughout the book is the importance of framing movement as fun . It's not about skills development , although skills are developed . It's not about physical fitness , although physical fitness is improved , but it's about play and fun and finding activities that kids get excited about and want to do .

So it's not something that oh gosh , another thing that I'm forced to do .

And so there is a lot of fun and play throughout the book and I think fitness professionals thinking about developing curricula targeted to families , professionals thinking about developing curricula targeted to families , targeted to kids of every age and every level and every ability , thinking about making it fun and matching the age level with the activity , with the theme

, and I think Zing for Kids does a really interesting and important work with that .

We have enough of those . So I think that is an important lesson . To abstract as well is that I don't care if you're 5 , 15 , 55 , or 105 , you want to do things that are enjoyable and fun . And if you can marry your movement and fun , then you have an activity that someone's going to continue to engage with .

So I talk a lot about active transportation getting kids to walk , jog , bike , scooter to and from school and then when they're at school , what role can teachers play in getting them moving in the classroom and I interviewed Dr Rebecca Hassan from your Neck of the Woods about these brief movement breaks in the classroom and the importance of getting kids up and

moving . For just a few minutes you can pair it with a lesson , you can have it stand on its own and then kids come back and your return on investment is extremely high because they are ready to engage and ready to focus and then teachers don't have to spend all of their time most of their time on behavior management , and so that's key within schools .

So teachers playing a really important role there . After school , I talked a little bit about health and fitness centers partnering with schools to offer after school programming or offering it on their own , and then evenings and weekends . What type of programming can we look at in addition to organized sports ? So it's not just organized sport , and I love .

I did interview a couple organized sports organizations where they talk about making it fun .

It is fun in games , but it's not just fun in games and so really thinking through what type of teamwork development , what type of leadership development that translates to the classroom , it translates to the workplace , it translates to the boardroom as you're setting kids up for success , and so thinking through those various touch points where do parents and caregivers

have are able to exert control and model behavior ? Where are coaches able to model behavior and exert control ? Where are teachers able ? Where are fitness professionals able to ? And we have .

We , as fitness professionals definitely have an opportunity here and I work with a lot of clients who are really trying to think through their programming and services for youth . Because , after the pandemic , although drop-off programming I guess how do I frame this ?

So drop-off when the adults are in the clubs , not particularly popular , but drop-off programming for camps and for summer camps , for vacation camps , for weekends , because we were trying to catch our kids up and so there was a lot of demand and appetite for that .

If I'm a fitness and exercise professional out there and I'm listening to this and this is resonating with me and I'm going to these conversations with people in the industry all the time about how they take advantage of what is this opportunity that has presented itself , what would you recommend as the first couple of steps towards how you start to work on this

opportunity ?

I mean , I think it was like 17 minutes per day less of physical activity than prior to the pandemic , which was not . We were not in a good place , and then we had families who went from no screen time to six hours a day of screen time and then additional in the evening .

So we've we have some habits that I think parents and caregivers are like okay , we need to make up for some lost time , we need to get rid of some habits and my kids are increasingly isolated .

So are there group fitness opportunities that focus on getting kids moving , that focus on connectedness , that focus on empowerment that might be of interest and really trying to figure out what the I talked about all those different touch points , but also thinking about what are the pain points for parents and caregivers right now .

And I do think parents and caregivers are worried about the amount of phone use , the amount of isolation , the amount of learning loss and just the real where we are in terms of obesity and physical activity levels and ways to and I take this approach in the book . It's a whole child health approach . You cannot .

You and I work in silos and trying to work across silos and integrate silos and knock down silos and to me it's the same thing around kids . We can't just address a problem with physical health . We have to address a problem with mental health and focus and concentration .

And physical activity isn't a panacea , it's not the magic bullet , but when we are at a loss for tools for how to address these problems , physical activity is a really important tool that addresses problems across all these three areas that I've mentioned .

That's always something that I try to look out for running an organization is how can I do good and do well at the same time ?

I know it opened my eyes to a lot of things that I don't often think about as somebody who has largely worked with adults most of his professional career , much like many exercise professionals . So I highly recommend the book . It is a good read . It is also a quick read With all the content that we're consuming .

For those of you that are watching the video , I'm holding it up so you can see the lack of thickness . This is not Moby Dick by any stretch of the imagination .

It's available both paperback and Kindle .

On the book , amy , I thought , like I said , it was really really well done and I'm glad we got to have this conversation .

But before I let you go , when you were on the podcast a couple of years ago , I did pose the wellness paradox question to you , which is how you know , how do we close off this trust , interaction and communication gap between exercise professionals and the medical community .

I'm curious if your answer has evolved at all or how you would answer that question now compared to a couple of years ago .

I was looking through my publications and my presentations over the last couple of years , and each and every single one of them has some type of language in there about bridging the gap , connecting the dots or knocking down silos , and to me , that is a validation not only of your mission , but my mission and how I set up my company , which was to knock down

the silos between healthcare , health and fitness and communities . And bridging the gap is still necessary , and the way to do that is through trusted , collaborative relationships and communication , and so I'm going to stick to my guns . It validates what I set up as my mission and vision in 2020 .

We have by no means achieved the goal of knocking down those silos , but we continue to beat the drum .

So I appreciate the consistency in messaging and you and I are very much fighting the same good fight , like I know a lot of our listeners are as well . So , amy Bantham , thank you so much for joining us again on the Wellness Paradox .

Forward slash episode 122 . Please be on the lookout for our next episode when it drops on the 19th of May . This is our special three-year anniversary episode where I'll be talking about what I've learned from all of our amazing guests these past three years . Until we chat again in that episode , please be well .