Help with training an overweight 12yo

Hi All

Looking for a little help. My 12 yo Nephew over the past few years has become lazy and overweight, he does next to no exercise apart from what he gets at school. I have just managed to persuade him to train with me 3 times a week. My idea for his training is a follows.

Warmup

Cardio (20 mins)

Strength Work

Stretching

His mum has managed to change his diet in the right direction so that is a plus and the 20 mins cardio (Running or Rowing Machine) at a gentle pace to begin with is a good star until his stamin builds. What I am looking for is some help from members that are used to teaching kids, help with a program design. If say I was to take 4 or 5 exercises.

Pushups

Situps

Dips

Rows

Squats

Would I be better with trying to design it around strength 5 x 5 or Endurance to help with Fatloss so 5 x 10 - 15 with an easier version of an exercise.

Obvisouly I want a program that he can do with some effort as I dont want him to just give up. Unlike my own training of past I need to have a program for him structured properly as at the end of the day if his weight continues to increase then its his health that is at risk.

Any help is appreciated.

Cheers

Dougie

3/5x5 with endurance. Reps higher than 10 seem to get quite boring with kids, imo.

Hi Blairbob

Thanks for the reply, yeah thats what I was thinking especially with my Nephews attention span.

I come from a traditional karate background, so I am used to training single techniques for long periods of time, especially with kids but I guess you have to have the metality for that type of training and where my nephew is concerned the 3 / 5 x 5 is probably the best option.

Cheers

Dougie

Yeah, I found my lil guys were far more interested in attention to form and interest in those rep ranges. Same thing with young girls.

I could see setting up some volume such as X amount of pushups or lunges or situps. But not something along the lines of 3 sets of 20. I could probably get kids to do a total of 50 or 100 but not multiple long sets.

And do not forget to encourage him too.

I have a friend who used to play Street Fighter as a kid alot. He is a great athlete, very strong and very sturdy, he trained sprinting, boxing, power lifting etc.

Once he told me: "I wanted to be like the guys in Street Fighter, that's why I started training."

He was able to bench press over 132 pound at 12 almost immediately. He is 30 now.

So.. kids need motivation and somebody to follow.