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News, October 2012

Outdoor Fitness in Belaya Kalitva – Alcoa Foundation/Fund for Sustainable Development Program “Youth Votes for Health”

Outdoor exercising is a relatively new discipline in our city; however, in Russia this movement has already become quite popular among adolescents and youth who chose a healthy life style. Instead of spending time on benches in their yards with cans of beer, they work out enthusiastically on fitness equipment installed there.  Outdoor exercising includes elements of traditional gymnastics and workouts. Thus, a new type of physical culture has appeared, one of the key principles of which is accessibility to various chinning bars and fitness machines.

Outdoor fitness grounds serve as an additional possibility for involving community members of all ages into mass physical culture, not all of whom can afford visits to a regular gym. However, the main goal here is to motivate people to come to these fitness grounds. I regularly go for walks with my young child in the new Solnechny District, which is inhabited mostly by young families and hear from other mothers and my own wife, in particular, about how good it would be if fitness grounds were built not only in school yards, but in residential areas as well. Mothers of young children are too busy to go to gyms, however, every evening hundreds of mothers and fathers are out in the yards of their high-rise buildings with their children. If such fitness grounds would have been there, I am sure they would not be empty.

When I told my neighbors about the existence of such grounds and that they were free, not only young mothers, but even the cleaning ladies from out house said that they would be glad to exercise on them. Some even began speaking about competitions under the title “Best Mother of the District”, to which the fathers responded by suggesting a contest for men “Strongest Father of the District”.  That is when it occurred to me that competition is a good incentive for attracting a large number of participants of different ages to fitness. After all, we spend our entire lives competing or struggling.

Thus, I decided to invite local senior citizens to the fitness ground on the Senior Citizen Day. Many came and liked it and some came again on Tuesday and were glad to exercise along with our youth.  On that day next year, I am planning a contest of pensioners that will be accompanied by a festive event.

Vladimir Mitko, fitness trainer
Belaya Kalitva Cossack Cadet School No. 90

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