Kids and Exercise - Safety First

I stumbled upon this video yesterday. It was so cute I decided to do a quick search for other videos with kids exercising. Big mistake.

I was surprised at the number of videos I saw with kids goofing around on cardio equipment. It's bad enough that parents allow, and even encourage kids to "play" on potentially dangerous equipment, but the fact that they advertise it on the internet blows my mind.

Exercising with your child is great and I applaud parents who encourage children to be active. If more parents did so, we wouldn't have the childhood obesity epidemic that we have. However, I would like to see some common sense used where adult sized equipment is involved.

From the Consumer Product Safety Commission website:

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) estimates that each year about 8,700 children under 5 years of age are injured with exercise equipment.There are an additional 16,500 injuries per year to children ages 5 to 14. Types of equipment identified in these cases include stationary bicycles, treadmills, and stair climbers. Fractures and even amputations were reported in about 20 percent of exercise equipment related injuries.

http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/pubs/5028.html

That's over 25,000 injuries and that's just kids up to 14.

I saw very small children on ellipticals. I saw a kid totally goofing around on a fast moving treadmill while barefoot. These are accidents waiting to happen.

All it takes is one slip.