Girl Power: How Teens Are Changing the Face of Fitness

A Body Is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Here's a question for you: If 33 percent of girls play team sports, what are the other 67 percent up to after school? As moms, sisters and, okay, editors of a magazine called FITNESS, we worry about the state of the average girl's BMI as much as we do her GPA. Back when most of us were kids, if balls, bats and sticks weren't your thing, it's likely your options were the arts or the library. Today, teens don't have to focus exclusively on mind or body. After school is a time to get both into a better place, and hopefully the trend will be one that sticks. Perhaps no group of girls shows that spirit more than those in this story.

"I begged my mom to bring me here," says 13-year-old Brianna Garofalo, one of 200 to 300 teens who work out at Underground Fitness, a gym exclusively for kids in Scarsdale, New York. Never mind that Brianna, a self-described tomboy who admits to being overweight before she started coming to Underground, has shed 10 pounds in three months. The real reason she's hooked on the health club, she says, can be summed up in four words: "It's so much fun!"