As a concerned and caring parent you want the best for your child. One of the first things you do when your child expresses an interest in a particular sport is be supportive and excited. The second thing you do is kindly share a dose of reality.
Dose of reality: It’s important to share with your daughter that track involves a lot of running and that this is something she needs to be prepared for.
The support: If your daughter is still excited, you can get her prepared by having her do interval sprints.
Here’s what she will need to do:
- Find an open field, park or empty sidewalk.
- Begin by jogging to warm up.
- Slowly get into a steady rhythm and begin to sprint and see how far she can go without getting winded to the point where she has to stop.
- When finished with the sprint have her slow her pace down to a jog again and catch her breath at that steady pace.
- Begin with 5-8 sprints at a time, 2-3 times a week. As the weeks go on try to increase the number of sprints that she can do.
- Don’t forget to stretch at the end.
This helped me cut my time drastically when I was marathon training.
By Katrina Phillip, Energetic Juniors Certified Personal Trainer
Energetic Juniors specializes in personal training for kids (in fact, that’s all we do!) If you’re looking for a trainer to work with your child, take a look at the full range of personal training sessions we provide. Contact us at 212-879-1566 for more information. Take a look at our site www.energeticjuniors.com
To submit your Ask the Expert questions please email it to bonita@energeticjuniors.com.