Fit Chicks: What We All Need for a Little Self-Esteem Boost

During the depressingly long winters, when the snow plagues our landscape for innumerable months, my body retreats into hibernation. However, at J. Percy Page School in Edmonton, a new club has been up and running since late April and because of it, members of the female population at the school are embarking on enjoyable adventures to bring our bodies out of hibernation through the Fit Chicks club.

Fit Chicks is a strictly female exercise group (in case the name hadn’t implied that) in which fitness, self-esteem and overall heath are the instructor’s primary focuses. As one of the first female instructors within the Wellness Centre, Megan Verran saw that girls were rarely seen in the predominately male-dominated centre. She decided to begin a club to entice girls into the centre to get healthy and work out. This after-school program started off only meeting on Wednesdays, but it is now run three times a week due to popular demand.

The sessions last about an hour and 15 minutes and the activities range from kickboxing and yoga to circuit training and spinning. “I wanted a workout that consisted of more than the workout I received from struggling to class with my books,” says Fatima, grade 11, her face a little flushed from the first 15 minutes of the session.

The Fit Chicks posters advertise, “getting fit for summer” and “boosting self esteem and confidence.” While Fatima and Sroop, who is also in grade 11, giggle in agreement over exercising to “tone up to wear a bikini,” Sroop explains her main reason for joining Fit Chicks: “Since we finished Phys Ed, and with being enrolled in the Full IB program, after all the mental stress, we need physical activity to burn it off.”

Let’s face it, in a world filled with the images of thin models with unobtainable physiques, it is nice to have an after school club that teaches young women how to care for their bodies, eat healthy and maintain a balance within their lives and bodies. To me, this is a most refreshing prospect.