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Schools

Exercise Class Gets Girls to Shape Up

Girls at Ferndale Middle School are kicking sedentary lifestyles to the curb during a six-week, after-school, boot camp-style fitness class.

American children are getting fatter by the year, and everything from high-fructose corn syrup to video games has been fingered as a possible culprit.

A big part of the problem is inactivity, especially for older youths who don’t tear around the playground at recess like they might have in first grade. But such sloth doesn’t stand a chance against Portia Hall and her E-3 Fitness class at .

About 25 girls have been meeting after school every Tuesday and Thursday since Jan. 18 where Hall, an instructor with everyBODY Fitness, leads them through boot camp-style exercises designed to help them get fit in a fun, supportive environment.

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The class was the brainchild of Ferndale Middle School Principal Dawn Warren, who takes a boot camp class from Hall at the school at 5:30 a.m.

Warren noticed that many of the children at the middle school were overweight, and she wanted to do something about it. She talked to Hall about the possibility of leading a class for girls at the school and was awarded a $1,200 grant from the Ferndale Education Foundation for the classes.

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“I see more smiles and more confidence” from the girls who are taking the class, Warren said. “There’s a lot of excitement about this.”

Classes meet twice a week in the cafeteria, and the girls are given a healthful snack, such as granola bars and milk, after the class. An activities bus takes them home, which opens the event to a wider group of participants. Hall also talks to the students about healthful lifestyles and that being healthy is more important than being a certain size.

“I tell them not to weigh themselves, that the primary thing is how their clothes fit. I also have them focus on what they can do this week that they couldn’t do the week before,” she said.

Jalyn Nance, a seventh-grader, began taking the class to lose some weight and tone up her midsection, and she said it’s working. “I feel much better, more confident, and I have had more energy,” she said. She added that the class has inspired her to be more active on her own.

That’s very much the point, Hall said. She uses very little equipment in her class, instead drilling the girls on proper form for pushups or doing “footballs,” a  hands-up, jog-in-place exercise similar to what football players do on the field. Almost everything they do in class is something the girls can do at home on their own.

“I tell them, ‘Don’t stop working out on weekends,’ " Hall said.

Correction: Ferndale Middle School Principal is Dawn Warren.

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