There is a number of research articles that made a connection to childhood activity and health and physical development as an adult. Yet we see obese kids now more then ever, and from my teacher friends a lot of todays kids are sedentary, ipad, videogames, tik tok etc. In my opinion this is setting your kid up for failure later on in life.
My question is have any of you lived sedentary childhoods/teenage years then got in shape as adults. How did you become fit, what was the motivator? If you trained any combat sports did you notice any lack of coordination that you had to overcome? How did you deal with it.
Reason I ask some guys seem to have such a harder time picking up grappling, or developing power in their striking than an average person. Almost always that person had a sedentary childhood (in my observations).
Last question is to the parents. Is having a sedentary kid a form of child abuse, whether obese or rail thin? Thoughts?
There are two questions here: 1) how important is starting as a kid to attaining high level in a sport; and 2) how important is training some kind of sport as a kid to not being obese as an adult. I think #2 is the more important question.
I was a sedentary kid who read books and played video games until age 15. Parents taught a generally healthy diet but no one played sports and my dad's philosophy (blue collar guy) was if you had time to play sports outside of school, you should get a job. Due to lifestyle, I had terrible cardio and was always picked last when doing playground sports with other kids.
Summer after HS freshman year, I committed to trying out for the cross country team, after two of my friends encouraged me. I spent the summer running on my own (vs. my friends who went to running camp), had a natural aptitude for it and they put me on the Varsity team after my second race, when I ran faster than my buddies and every other 9th and 10th grade kid on the team. Coming out of that, I figured I might as well run track. I competed 800m and pole vault. Wasn't great but wasn't terrible either and coming out of that figured I might as well try out for wrestling. I WAS terrible at that but by that point had developed very good cardio and mental toughness so I toughed it out, made the team and became a .50 wrestler at JV and Varsity.
By that point, I very much preferred being fit, strong and confident vs. skinny and weak. I've trained consistently for the past 30 years and am now mid-40's and still wear the same size jeans I wore in HS.
Re. question #1: I think starting as a younger kid is practically a requirement to attain high level in any sport with a deep talent pool. I didn't train any sports until age 15 and my base coordination was terrible - I did well at conditioning sports like running, lifting weights etc., but catching a ball, even natural grappling ability, forget about it. I did the best with what I had but 100% convinced my ceiling for kinesthetic awareness would be higher if I had started as a kid. My kids started sports at age 4 and I will be encouraging it until they leave for college.
Re. question #2: had I not suffered through teenage insecurity, I don't know if I would have broken out of my sedentary routine. It's fucking hard to go against years of habit. I've run into countless overweight people in their 20's and 30's who commit to a routine and maybe have some success for a year or two, but eventually fall back into their unhealthy diets and lifestyle. For those who have internalized their training habits, working out is our comfort zone. Going for a run, getting under a barbell or hitting the mats for grappling is as natural as brushing my teeth. I might skip it once in a while if I'm really feeling beat but in general, I can't live without it. For habitually overweight and sedentary people, starting a workout regimen would be like being told to start brushing your teeth for the first time at age 25. It's a PITA, a chore and why do it if you've been surviving OK without it?
