My dd started dog training thru 4h and has now moved on to agility. Lots of excercise and events. Even have scholarships for junior handlers.
I was going to suggest this very thing.
Agility is
really good exercise if you have a dog which is pretty speedy. We have herders, and they LOVE agility. We have a few PVC jumps set up in our back yard all the time, and it is DD's
responsibility to take our younger dog (not yet 1yr) for a LONG walk each morning first thing. This is defensive, and it
must be done, or the dog will get into trouble all day long with that extra energy.
Even if you don't have a speedy sort of dog, ANY dog will require a lot of time and activity in training for 4-H.
I also agree wholeheartedly with ultramarina. I was
not an athletic kid. In fact, I joke that I was not "non" athletic, but
anti-athletic.
It was utterly humiliating to be told, even as a young adult, that "everyone" can _______ (play softball, play volleyball, bowl, golf, shoot hoops, etc).
Well, no. Not "everyone" can. Unless the point was to emphasize that some of us are a second-class sort of human being in this respect.
Some things that I have found that I enjoy doing for fitness:
swimming laps
pilates or aerobics (basically-- take a class, learn the moves/techniques, and then listen to music and do it on my own)
Tai Chi (which my equally non-athletic DD also enjoys)
ping-pong (trust me, the way some people play, this IS a workout)
ballet (again, take a class, conduct your own drill at home)
walking
cross-country skiing
snowshoeing
golf (it's self-paced and much more cerebral than most things)
sailing
canoeing.
My daughter has really enjoyed Akido, too-- and she is not a 'competitive' or 'confrontational' sort of kid at all, so I was surprised. We, too, had the kind of Dojo (and Sensei) mentioned earlier-- supportive and all about developing as students of the art, not about sparring and 'wins' necessarily.
