Health & Wellness Program Launches with Rock Climbing and Nutritional Seminar

Last Saturday we launched our A Bridge for Kids Health & Wellness Program! While this program is still in the development stage, the goal will be to teach our students the importance of leadership, teamwork, staying active, proper nutrition, and a healthy balanced diet. 

An exciting part of our new initiative is a program called Arete. If you read the article on our first Arete, you know that Arete is the Greek philosophy that puts heavy emphasis on the development of three aspects of one’s life: Mind, Body, and Spirit. Arete is also defined more colloquially as a sharp mountain ridge.

Staying true to these philosophies, we started off the day by providing our students with a healthy dinner provided by Cava, alongside some healthy snacks which were handpicked by Los Angeles based personal trainer and ABFK alumni Brianna Diaz. She told our students about proper nutrition in day-to-day lives, how to read and understand nutrition labels, the differences between processed foods vs natural foods, and much more. After all the questions were answered, Brianna lead a warm-up routine, and we jumped right into climbing and learning how to keep each other safe while doing so.

One part of the evening our teens especially enjoyed was competing on an auto-belay for the fastest time up the wall. An auto-belay is a safe and automatic system where the climber simply clips in and begins climbing. When the climber is done or wishes to come down, all they have to do is let go and the auto-belay will slowly lower the climber to the ground. Letting go and trusting the auto-belay can be pretty scary at first, but after everyone conquered their fears, they began flying up and down the walls. One of our students was so quick, that he earned himself a free membership for a month - scaling the 40-foot wall and getting to the ground all in under 15 seconds!

One student mentioned, “I liked how we talked about nutrition while eating healthy food. Being with friends the whole time was also very fun in every activity. Rock climbing was super fun too especially with the mini-competitions we had… Overall being with my friends, having everyone included, and doing something as fun as rock climbing was really a great experience.”

After an exhausting day of climbing, we couldn't be more excited about the future of our Health and Wellness initiative. We are looking forward to working with Vertical Hold, Brianna, and many others as the program evolves!