Level 2 Children's Exercise and Obesity Instructor

Childhood Exercise and Obesity Course Content:

This course represents a combination of two very popular child health and wellness courses – The first course is the CYQ (Central YMCA Qualifications) Health-related Exercise for Children and the second course is the Weight Management Centre Childhood Obesity Intervention and Prevention course. The combined course is designed to ensure you can work with children to improve their physical fitness as well as advise children and families about healthy eating and smarter food choices. There is a strong psychological component with lots of guidance on behaviour change and how to motivate and support children and families to combat child obesity.  The child obesity course aspect will also cover many of the policy, social and environmental drivers of child obesity as well as looking at broader prevention strategies to curb the child obesity epidemic.  The Childhood Obesity Course has been written by health professionals, dietitians and nutritionists and is edited by the Founder of Weight Management Centre and obesity expert Alan Jackson Msc.

The Health Related Exercise for Children course will provide you with a vast array of options for working with children aged 5 to 16.  You will learn about growth related injuries and how to avoid these as well as the common conditions encountered when working with children in an exercise setting such as Asthma, Dyspraxia and exertional breathlessness.

This combined child exercise and obesity course would be ideal for those wishing to work in schools or leisure facilities working with children to prevent or to intervene in issues of weight and poor fitness in children, which currently affects around a third of all children in the UK. From this it is evident that there is a real need for such competencies and as such job opportunities following this course would include posts such as: Children’s fitness / activity Instructor or Child Weight Management Practitioner, and these posts are emerging consistently in the private and public sector.

This course is designed for anyone working with young people including: community health providers, school and practice nurses, fitness professionals, teachers or those involved in planning, design or policy formulation in areas impacting children. The course is also recommended for those who are planning to or are currently providing exercise tuition for children. This may include staff in leisure and fitness centres, after school clubs or people who want to help promote fitness to children.

A summary of each individual course is provided below, but if you would like to read about each course individually please visit: HRE link; COP Link.

Part 1: CYQ Level 2 Certificate in Instructing Health Related Exercise for Children

The Health Related Exercise for Children (Children’s Exercise Course) is the essential qualification to deliver exercise sessions for children aged 5 to 16 years. The course is ideal for those wishing to work as an after school club leader, activity teaching assistant; children’s activity programmer or youth worker involved in children’s exercise or physical activity. This level 2 qualification is also very popular with primary school teachers, who can then take on the role of exercise specialist within the school.

The course offers the latest in innovative exercise programmes and techniques that are highly appropriate for children. You will learn how to engage children into exciting and fun activities that are sustainable and balanced between cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength and endurance. You will also be instructed how to assess children’s fitness using appropriate and safe techniques, as well as how to spot some of the more common growth related injuries that can occur from injury, over-training or poor technique. You will also learn how to build safe and effective fitness programmes for children graded between the various age ranges, and how you measure how effective your programme has been.

Specific taught components: