2023 is upon us, and with it, Samir’s new fitness campaigns! HFR founder Samir is no stranger to campaigns aimed at promoting fitness and health (he famously ran 7 marathons in 8 weeks wearing a 73.5 lbs weighted vest to promote awareness and lived for 6 weeks with a 200 lbs weighted suit to better understand obesity)! In recent years, he’s spearheaded dozens of campaigns on the national and international levels. His most recent 2021 campaign involved sending dedicated and signed books of his HarperCollins published “ReSync Your Life” to U.S. political leaders in an effort to inspire them to keep motivating Americans to live healthier and fitter.
However, a topic near and dear to his heart has always been children. His passions include helping to combat the childhood obesity epidemic by giving kids the information and tools they need to stay healthy and active throughout their lives. As the obesity rate of our youth in this country continues to climb, he has set his sights on motivating and offering his assistance at implementing more physical activity in their programs. He will start with reaching out to schools within the City of Houston, Harris County, and greater Houston, and then moved on to the state of Texas, and finally nationwide, totaling 500 school districts.
Over the years, Samir has volunteered his time and efforts at youth fitness through speeches, seminars for school nutritionists, and many partnerships with organizations focused on childhood fitness and nutrition. It is his belief that by getting the proper training and information, students will grow into the powerful young leaders of tomorrow while imparting the core values that our non-profit represents- health, fitness, life balance, perseverance, hard work, determination, and respect to their friends, families, and communities.
First, I am covering @HoustonTX, #HarrisCounty, and greater-Houston, then #Texas-wide, and finally nationwide. According to @Harvard, physical fitness remodels the brain for peak performance on all fronts including memory retention, alertness, motivation, and brain growth.
— Samir Becic (@SamirBecic) February 4, 2022
Here is what Samir wrote in his letters:
I write to you as a parent and a community member to express my concern regarding the health and fitness of Texas’ public-school students, and to offer my assistance in addressing this matter of critical importance.
By way of background, for the last twenty years I have devoted myself to improving the health and fitness of people of all ages and backgrounds through lectures, public advocacy, community outreach, and publishing. I am a Level 6 fitness trainer and health expert who has been awarded the title of “#1 fitness trainer in America” on four separate occasions. I am the founder of the non-profit Samir Becic Foundation 501(c)3, Health Fitness Revolution magazine with over 14 million readers, the creator of the ReSync Fitness Method, and the author of the Harper Collins book ReSYNC Your Life. Currently, I serve as the official “fitness czar” for the City of Houston.
As I am sure you are aware, America’s children are facing a health crisis. According to the CDC, 33% of our nation’s youth are overweight or obese, leading to an unprecedented rise in type-2 diabetes, heart problems, and other preventable illnesses. Although numerous studies have demonstrated that school-based fitness programs are key to fighting this worsening problem, the vast majority of American schoolchildren do not participate in even the minimum level of physical activity recommended by the CDC. This fact is all the more tragic given that increased physical activity not only leads to healthier students, it also leads to better academic performance by increasing concentration and attention skills and improving classroom behavior and attitudes.
Throughout my career as a fitness expert, I have had the opportunity to work with dozens of schools and I have consistently observed that schools that implemented higher levels of fitness training and activity experienced increased academic performance, improved student attendance, decreased bullying, and an overall improvement in school dynamics and atmosphere. Therefore, I am writing to you today to urge you to work to increase the level and effectiveness of physical fitness programs offered to the students of your school district. To help you in this important task I offer myself as a resource to assist you in organizing and implementing age-appropriate student fitness activities, and in motivating students to actively participate in these activities.
I invite you to contact me at your convenience to discuss with me how I can work with you to improve the health, fitness, and academic performance of the students of your school district.
Fast Facts
Studies have shown that exercise is paramount to raising healthy, happy, and successful children. Increasing the time children at school are physically active- this includes structured and unstructured play opportunities, combined with intentional instruction in fundamental movement skills, such as running, jumping, skipping, hopping, throwing, climbing- provides the foundation for kids to enjoy physical activity and sports, but also benefits brain development, scholastic performance, and wellbeing in general.
A Harvard Medical School professor explored the connection between exercise and the brain, providing strong evidence that aerobic exercise physically remodels the brain for peak performance on all fronts. Specifically, exercise improves learning on three levels: “First, it optimizes your mindset to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus.” In short, not only does exercise help the brain get ready to learn but it actually makes retaining information easier.
Here are just a few of the ways health and fitness have been proven to benefit students:
- It turns out that physical exercise acts as a multiplier on student performance, improving academic performance and student behavior.
- Take a University of Georgia study that found 60 minutes of exercises benefits information processing.
- Stanford report
that shows a positive link between activity and creative thinking. - Physical activity is an excellent setting for social skills development, collaborative problem solving, practicing good sportsmanship, and providing a safe and healthy environment for children and teens to gather.
Here are the articles highlighting each step of his campaign:
