Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield, and I'm the Get Fit Guy.

Last year, I did an episode called How Much Should Kids Exercise,

in which I stated that although children don't need a lot of intense physical activity

to get the health benefits of exercise, at least seven minutes of exercise per day is the minimum

necessary to prevent weight gain, obesity, and chronic health risks. But two recent

occurrences involving kids and exercise got me thinking. So the first thing that got me

thinking about children and exercise is that my friend Joe DeSena, the CEO of Spartan Racing, told me

that his eight-year-old boy had just completed a 50K race and had also run the Boston Marathon,

along with a variety of other very impressive and grueling feats of endurance.

And the second thing is a recently published magazine article in the Atlantic entitled

How Far Is Too Far for Kids to Run? Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a huge advocate of

increasing physical activity in children. I talked about this in a previous episode called

How to Get Kids Fit, and I'll link to all of the episodes and the links that I talk about today

over at quick and dirty tips.com. Just go there and do a search for episode number 207.

And I also recently spoke at the 431 Project, which you can check out at the 431 project.com,

about ways that we can combat childhood obesity and get kids more active.

But how much is too much for kids to exercise?

Well, while many children are still sitting around playing video games,

other children are now exercising in extremely high volumes,

with an increasing number of

young athletes training for and competing in long-distance endurance events, like triathlons, obstacle

...