For other beach goers in southern California, the emblem of beach fitness is a great tan. A number of people try to get that tan without even going to the beach. They make a point of visiting the many tanning salons, salons open for business in communities close to the Pacific Ocean.
The healthy way to address the concept of beach fitness calls for a closer look at total fitness. An overemphasis on big muscles can push a person to use harmful anabolic steroids. An overemphasis on the ability to get a great tan can cause a person to develop skin cancer.
Parents should want their children to view beach body fitness as a state in which the entire body has become healthier. Parents can encourage that concept of beach fitness by helping young children to enjoy the beach in the safest manner possible. That was the approach taken by one young father in the early 1980s.
That father did not wait for the hot days of summer before taking his family down to the beach. He made a point of going to the beach in the late afternoon on at least one weekend day every week. He inaugurated that practice in March, well before the sun’s rays became dangerously intense.
While with his family at the beach, that father did not just sit and stare at the ocean. He played ball with his son, usually kicking the ball in the manner of a soccer player. That son later participated in a number of soccer activities. His total fitness allowed him to do lots of running on a soccer field.
In fact that young boy learned early to appreciate the value of total body fitness. He enjoyed running in the short race for students, held annually before the Western Hemisphere Marathon. Later he excelled at performance of certain exercises, exercises that were part of “tests” given to students in the physical education classes of the local Middle School.
By excelling in those tests, that young man then learned the relationship between the attainment of total fitness and the availability of college scholarships. While in the eighth grade, that young athlete had such a good score on his fitness tests that he was asked to pick three schools he thought that he might like to attend.
It was apparent to the boy’s mother that the colleges wanted to start as early as possible to recruit good athletes. For a brief period the mother shared with her own mother hopes that her son might one day go to his first choice—Penn State. That would have allowed her son to live close to his grandmother.
Unfortunately the student’s beach fitness turned out to be a good deal greater than his classroom fitness. That young man chose thus to pursue a career in computers, a career that he managed to follow without going after any sort of college scholarship.