Parents now have the option of bringing their children to specially adapted gyms and can even buy equipment for them to use at home. But is it the best option for your children? Hélène Hofmanreports.
Many children in Ireland are not meeting the current recommendations for physical activity. According to the Health Behaviours of School-Aged Children survey, the number of children participating in regular exercise four or five times a week is falling by about 4 per cent every year.
Figures from the CSO suggest that this may be due in part to the fact that an increasing number of children are being driven to school. Only 26 per cent of five- to 12-year-olds walked to school in 2002, compared with 47 per cent in 1981 and 29 per cent in 1991, and fewer than 3 per cent cycle.
The increasing popularity of video games has also been blamed for the move away from physical activity.
Now, parents are being offered an alternative to get young people active again. A number of children's gyms are opening in Ireland. Already the Kid's Gym franchise has three centres around Dublin, the Little Gym has opened in Liffey Valley and the West Wood fitness club in Leopardstown has extended its facility to include a children's gym. If signing children up to a gym isn't an option, a range of exercise equipment for children has just been launched here.
"Children like using equipment they see their parents using," says Daniel Begley, of Teamhop, which launched GymKids exercise equipment for children in Ireland earlier this year.
The GymKids range - which includes miniature treadmills, rowing machines and cycling machines for children aged three to 11 - is aimed at schools and creches. However, the range also includes two exercise game machines that can be plugged into a child's PlayStation games console and can be used at home.
"Obesity is a growing problem and we need to change habits and get children exercising early. Kids spend nine to 10 hours a week watching TV, they don't walk any more, they're driven everywhere and their natural exercise has been reduced," says Begley.
"We still say let them outside to play but with the weather we have here that's often not an option. This is about building healthy habits - you're not building muscle, it's just cardiovascular exercise in a safe way."
It is estimated that about one in five Irish children under the age of 15 are overweight or obese. However, not everyone is convinced that encouraging your child to use fitness equipment is the best way to tackle the problem.
"I would rather see parents out running with their kids, going for walks and picking daisies, whatever they can do," says Noirín Ui Loinsigh, a former PE lecturer at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.
"Kids need to get out and be active - they need exercise and they need to eat properly. But by cutting out the rubbish from their diet and exercising normally, there should be no need for this," she says.
"However, I can see the other side of the argument. Parents are so busy commuting. Things have changed and parents are terrified to leave their children out to play. But I'm not sure that handing responsibility to someone else is the best way to deal with it," she says.
According to Alan Leech, sales and marketing manager with West Wood, the decision to open a gym for children was based on demand from parents. He estimates that about 600-700 children from the age of three already use West Wood facilities in Clontarf and Leopardstown, including the swimming pool, tennis courts and summer camps.
"We are family-orientated. It's been shown that if a parent is active and kids see that, they're more likely to do things as well," he says.
"The kids' gym is really down to demand from the parents. People see the name gym and they think weights - but that's not what it's about. We have cardiovascular equipment and resistance training.
"They can go and if it doesn't work out they just drop out, and it's all very much done in a healthy way. We make it fun and it's not about heavy squats or looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger - it's about general fitness," he says.
"One of the biggest concerns of the World Health Organisation is rising obesity. People are getting strokes younger and younger, and we're seeing people get heart attacks at 30 - so that's a far bigger concern than what kind of exercise kids are doing.
"Obviously if a kid is going out and playing football then they won't need to go to the gym but it might be an option for a child who isn't as active."
According to Grace O'Malley, a chartered paediatric physiotherapist at Temple Street Children's Hospital, children should be doing at least one hour of exercise per day. Half of this exercise should be weight bearing, where the weight is carried through the limbs, for example, running or jumping.
"If children are doing the appropriate amount of activity, they shouldn't need to go to the gym, and weight-bearing exercises can be incorporated into everyday play," she says.
"My concern would be that children who are going to take up a gym routine need to be stress tested.
"The danger is they'll be going to the gym before they go through the medical system, and children, for example, if they're severely overweight, need to be seen to check what they're able to do.
"Also, a lot of the young kids I would work with in the hospital just wouldn't find a gym enjoyable. They would need more age-appropriate games. Children do their own intermittent bursts of exercise. Whereas adults might do an hour on the treadmill, for kids it doesn't work like that . . .They exercise in short bursts, and can't just do an hour of running or cycling," says O'Malley.
"Exercise is free and you shouldn't have to go to the gym, there are other ways to exercise. I think if you can get them interested in sports or after-school activities, then the gym should not be your first port of call.
"But, once they're getting an hour's exercise and once it's enjoyable, that's the important thing. If it's going to the gym that they enjoy, well then consider it," O'Malley says.