Extreme Gym Class for Kids, or How My Vacation Made Me Feel Out of Shape

So the family I was visiting in NJ is the family that once upon a time I worked for as a nanny. The family is comprised of 2 awesome parents (more on them in a future post) 4 fabulously fun girls, and 3 dogs of various yappy-ness. The girls range in ages from 9 to 18 and all are tremendously talented athletes. All 4 girls are training hard this summer for their respective fall sports (college, high school, middle school, & elementary school) at a local gym whose mission statement is something to the effect of "making your children into professional athletes in just 3 easy steps"*

I drove the carpool to the gym bright and early one morning and let me tell you, I got a workout just watching these kids. I was amazed to see the sprint trials the 9 year old's group was doing that day: ladders back and forth across the gym with almost alarming speed. And let me tell you, those 9 year olds were FAST! The 13 and 15 year old's classes overlapped a bit and watching them do squats and chest presses with not much less weight than I lift was definitely a reality check. I am in better shape now than I was in high school, which I am tremendously proud of, but I felt like such an out of shape soccer mom watching these kids pump iron, hard, for 90 minutes.

So after gym class, I went home, had half a donut in consolation, and swam in the pool the rest of the day. Swimming counts as exercise, right??

*ok I made up the 3 easy steps part, but the mission statement does involve making children into "professional athletes."