Movati Athletic launches Strength Training for Girls

The MOVATI Athletic personal training team recently launched a youth program where trainers work with youth as young as 8 years old to improve their athletic performance and support good physical and mental health.

Jenn Patterson, a level 2 Personal Trainer at MOVATI Burlington, took this program launch as the opportunity to bring the world of strength training into the lives of young girls. At an age when low self-esteem and poor body image begins to take its toll, she believes empowering girls to become more confident in their own skin by building strength can be life changing.

The 8-week program (Table A) focused on developing the fundamentals of the basic compound movements. It begins by breaking down movement patterns like the hip hinge, squat, pull, push and carry, to ensure the girls have time to understand and learn how to move correctly.

After the first 6 weeks of focusing on specific movements, the program wraps up by incorporating multiple exercises into a full workout.

Week 1
Assessment, Goal Setting & Basic Movement Mechanics

Week 2
The Squat: Learn the squat movement patterns, variations & workout

Week 3
Push: Learn a variety of upper body push exercises & workout

Week 4
Hinge: Learn how to properly hinge, avoid injury & workout

Week 5
Pull: Learn a variety of upper body pull exercises & workout

Week 6
Carry & Endurance: Experience a workout with a greater endurance focus that incorporates a carry movement to develop grip and core strength.

Week 7
Lower Body Strength: Lower body focused workout, drawing from movement taught over the past 6 weeks

Week 8
Upper Body Strength, revisit goals & next steps. Upper body focused workout drawing from what’s been taught over the past 6 weeks.

Patterson struggled with her own self-esteem and body image as a result of being overweight as a preteen and understands how critical it is to uplift young girls to embrace their bodies. She battled an unhealthy relationship with nutrition and exercise while at University and over time discovered there’s far more to the gym than weight loss, and her passion for fitness sprouted from wanting to spread this message with others.

“I was instantly excited to create an opportunity for young girls to come together and be active while making friends and having fun … I hope to help these girls find a passion for strength that will translate into other avenues of their life and allow them to feel capable of achieving any goal,” said Patterson.

Strength training is changing the lives of many around the world and, if supervised and applied correctly, there is no reason youth can’t reap the benefits of it as well.

Imagine if we all discovered the strength potential we have, at a time when the world was telling us we must diet and over-exercise for the sake of shrinking into societal expectations? Good news is that Jenn Patterson is doing that very thing, one girl at a time, and you can too.

Author: Jenn Patterson