Jackson FitTeens just made it to the halfway mark! Three great weeks of effort and fitness, by both students AND teachers. On the ends, Michelle and Lindsay of the Foundation and Ms Allen and Daresha D.- campers of the week winners! The Jackson program continues through Oct 21st and will end with an amazing awards banquet on Saturday Oct 22nd at 5pm. Congrats to Ms Allen and Daresha!

The Foundation successfully completed their first overnight fitness and team building retreat at Winshape Wildernss facilities on Sept 10 & 11th. Eighteen fitteens conquered new heights- literally- and received some in depth fitness basics from Foundation trainers. Jackson FitTeens now goes into six weeks of fitness, with the momentum and pride of Winshape success under their belts:)

Recruiting began 16 Aug at Jackson H.S.! We’re headed to Winshape Wilderness (be sure to watch the video) for our retreat in Mount Berry, GA on 10 Sep. In addition to getting our first two workouts in, our team will experience the ropes course and team building challenges. Our kids are going to love this!

We’re getting pumped for our next FitTeens program at M.H. Jackson High School. This will be our 7th program at Jackson and the first program of our new model. The new model includes a weekend retreat to kick-off the program and two seasons of FitTeens at the same school in one school year. Bottom line: we are increasing our our contact time with the kids to over 100 hours–more than 4 times our previous FitTeens programs! (Locations for retreat and banquet are still TBD, but the prospects are super cool!)

Retreat: Sat/Sun 10-11 Sep
First Day of Camp: Mon, 12 Sep
Last Day of Camp: Fri, 21 Oct
Banquet: Sat, 22 Oct

We’re looking for volunteers for any and all FitTeens activities. Hit up Michelle Woods () for more info.

Not even a little bloodshed could stop the fitness today. Brentavius of the Study Hall didn’t shed one tear and even showed his fitness warrior side after a long FitWit battle of TugOWar. Brentavius’s advice: Buck up- fitness is worth it:)

Thanks to the FitWit Nation and so many other supporters of the Foundation, many smiling and proud faces abound! Hilton and Elijah, who have completed their “ABC” push ups- forwards and backwards, now show the universal sign of strength! And take a look at many more smiling faces in our clap up after some fitness fun!

The FitWit Foundation doesn’t slow down with the end of school semesters; we officially kicked off our FitKids Summer Fitness program at the Study Hall on June 7th! The program will run through July 14th and we get to facilitate 76 kids, ages K-5th grade in some sunny fitness programs! For more information about the Foundation’s summer program or how to volunteer, please contact: michelle@fitwit.com.

And for more information on the programs and mission of the Study Hall, visit: www.thestudyhall.org

Josh speaks to Witt Nation 2010 from Wittenberg University where Josh and Ben met.  The footage was shot during our program with The Study Hall summer of 2010.  This summer at The Study Hall, Michelle leads five trainers to bring fitness to 80 kids twice a week.

The FitWit Foundation (TFF) proudly announces the Most Improved Fitness winner of its Spring 2011 FitTeens fitness competition at Grady High School (GHS). The Most Improved Fitness winner, Tyler Booker, age 16, improved her total fitness ability by an impressive 50.1%. Booker is one of 32 students and 13 faculty and staff members of GHS who attended a six-week fitness camp from 14 April to 20 May 2011. The camp, provided by TFF, consisted of four one-hour group workout sessions each week led by certified fitness trainers.

Booker even impressed herself with her accomplishments. “I can’t believe I did that,” says Booker, “It went by so fast, so I can’t believe I got better so quickly—and I have never seen or tried most of the exercises we did! My family is so proud of me and asks me to show them exercises now.” Booker, a junior, plans to base her senior project presentation on the subject of developing fitness next semester.

Taylor Booker, Tyler’s twin sister, also participated in the FitTeens program. Taylor earned the coveted Camper of the Week award at the halfway point of the program for having perfect weekly attendance, a great attitude, and exhibiting outstanding effort.

The FitWit Foundation also awarded Kim Carr, school nurse at GHS, the Educator Leadership Award for exemplifying the fit lifestyle, exceptional participation and commitment to the program.

The FitTeens program promotes a noncompetitive environment where fitness can be fun. The objectives of the program are to develop the habits and mindset of personal development, continuous improvement, goal setting; increase participant fitness abilities by an average of 25%; develop skill mastery in four basic exercises (push-up, sit-ups, squats, and jump rope), and gain exposure to a variety of fitness activities; associate fitness activity with fun, and average greater than 3.5 hours of fitness activity per week per participant.

All FitTeens participants improved their performances in each exercise markedly, but Booker achieved the greatest overall improvement across all exercises. As a whole, the group improved their fitness ability by an average of 39.8%.

More local press: http://eastatlanta.patch.com/articles/fit-for-a-teen

“We watch them get to the point where they’re taking ownership for their own improvement,” Thoele said.

“When they’re saying, ‘I can do better than that; let me try.’”

FitTeens is not just about the physical exercise, though. The first of five main goals is actually personal development for the teens and instilling the values of goal setting. Then comes increasing physical abilities, then achieving mastery of core exercises so they could teach someone else, then having fun, and lastly, just making sure they show up every day.