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My son is actually pretty athletic but we started fencing lessons, which he loves. Supposedly fencing is very cerebral- it isn't just waving swords around.

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.

Some of the comments in here have suggested that sports which require more thinking and less reacting are ideal, but in my experience, it's the opposite. I was the awkward child precisely because I spent too much time thinking about what I wanted my body to do, rather than trusting my body and letting it loose. It took playing sports where I didn't have time to think to snap me out of it. This isn't just something that helped me as a child, either. I took up roller skating at 25, and I was pretty awkward at it as most novices are, and I became a smooth skater by playing hockey, where I had too many other things to think about to worry about how to skate.

Gifted kids can be their own worst enemies in sports because they often think too much about how to move. Then they get labelled as non-athletic, and it becomes a destructive part of the self-identity. If they can get past that over-thinking, and with sufficient practice, there's a saying in sports where the game slows down for an athlete. That's shorthand for reaction times shortening, on the physical side due to muscle memory, and on the mental side due to pattern recognition and anticipation. That frees up a lot of brain power for advanced strategic thought... and it's at this point that the gifted kids start kicking the crap out of sometimes more physically-advanced counterparts.

We put our DS8 in every YMCA summer sports camp when he was younger, making him try everything at least once, and he hated all the team sports. But I think he may eventually come around to at least try team sports someday. (His parents both still play softball for fun.) Going to day camps and trying different things has also helped. He is much more willing to try. I think for him, he just doesn't want to try new things that he's not immediately good at, and that sort of thing gets harder when friends have been playing a sport for several years that he's just now willing to try. Oh well.

We have the same rule of doing at least one sport activity. DS chose fencing, and he really likes it. (Incidentally, one of the women from his fencing club will be going to the Olympics and she started fencing at age 9.) DS will also be starting golf lessons this summer (do a search - there are free lessons for kids in many areas).

I was about as nonathletic a child as it's possible to be, and I discovered in college that I had a real talent for ballroom dancing. I danced competitively for about fifteen years, and became New England and Eastern US amateur champion in my division (American smooth). It is definitely hard, hard work, but I found it to have a lot of the advantages of team sports, but with a much smaller "team."

The downside is that the ballroom world can be very image-conscious, and it's hard to succeed without the "right" kind of body at the top levels. But you can go a long way before you hit that ceiling, even if it applies.

Oh... dancing is fabulous exercise Your post reminded me of my short lived ballet phase (I took it as an adult, for fun). I enjoyed it and I can't recall now why I stopped - I think I got too busy. Anyway, I remember being amazed at how quickly I got toned. Dancing is not as easy as it looks, that's for sure - it's definitely exercise. It's the perfect combination of sport and art

Love all these great suggestions! Thank you!!

I was actually invited to leave a Salsa class due to my ineptitude at following basic commands without running into others and recently left a class after giving it another try. I wholeheartedly support the suggestions to let your kiddo find what inspires them, because there is nothing quite like knowing you're terrible at something and realizing others are enjoying the entertainment at your expense to make you decide that sports, exercise, etc. is not worth the emotional toll.

One of these days I'll figure out how to pay for private lessons and finally learn to dance.

I was put in dance since I was a klutzy lefty. I did colorgaurd/competetive dance in high school...i was fiiiiit. I loved competition and being part of a team. My nephew marches trumpet for a super competitive HS marching band. I helped the gaurd and loved seeing your typical awkward band kid become a fit and confident athlete. They do a three week band camp where they run a mile daily, do pilates and strength-building, in addition to learning their show. Some of the kids have never trained physically or been a pary of a team before.

Evemomma- I am very familiar with competitive marching band and color guard. I would love for dd to be involved with that in some way when the time comes. In fact, we are taking her to some drum corps shows this summer. Maybe she'll get the bug . . .