Four South African little ones take on the 21km challenge

Mobilising communities to adopt healthy lifestyles. BECOMES NATIONWIDE FITNESS PHENOMENON

Bringing fitness to the average Joe, the world’s largest food and beverage company, Nestlé, together with Bar-One, have joined forces to introduce the Bar-One Gym Squads in communities across It will be a day that will go down in history when four ridiculously cute babies, kitted out with specially designed distance-tracking devices, will embark on the greatest challenge any baby has yet undertaken: the World’s First Baby Marathon, hosted by Huggies.

Research has shown that babies can generally move anywhere between 1-7 km in a single day. The World’s First Baby Marathon is going to put this theory to the test and measure how much babies really move. The chosen little ones won’t actually be crawling down the streets. They will instead attempt to complete 21km over a seven-day period across some of the toughest terrain known to babies – their very own dummy-dotted, soft-toy-strewn homes.

These four little athletes will be crawling, walking and waddling through their everyday routines wearing a specially de- the country. The boot campstyle fitness programme has kicked off to a great start since launching last month in Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and the Western Cape.

The programmes take place on a Saturday morning and include well-known community fitness and wellness trainers, who have the task of being the instructors throughout the training.

With the aim of giving back and promoting active lifestyles in large communities, the Gym Squad fitness programmes are signed distance-tracking device. “We worked incredibly hard over the past eight months with a company called Brand Foundry, who helped us come up with a piece of technology that could not only track the little ones’ movements and convert this into kilometres, but be safe to use for them as well,” explains Morné van Emmenes, senior brand manager for Huggies.

The World’s First Baby Marathon will see, in no particular order of cuteness, super-fast eight-month-old Ramon “Thunder Pants” Thobejane, alwayson-the-go nine-month-old Grayson “Racin’ Grayson” Llewellyn, as-busy-as-she-is-adorable 11-month-old Thando “Hurricane Thando” Sithole and last but not least, punching way above his weight, seven-monthold Danté “Danger Boy” Gurumurthi take on this long crawl to greatness. Check out their profiles on babymarathon.co.za fun, beneficial and free to the attendees who live in and around the communities.

Using social media platforms Facebook and Twitter to communicate logistics to the various communities, the training camps have seen great success in provinces such as KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State, where group exercise instructor Ben Zwane got the chance to showcase his expertise in fitness to his community.

Zwane, who is born and bred in Bloemfontein, has spent the past 21 years as a group exercise instructor for cardio workout and conditioning for clubs, including Training Edge Club, Health & Racquet, Health Club, Super Health & Adventure Club, and Virgin Active.

In 2001, he worked at the correctional facilities G4s and provided his services as sports officer, facilitating a programme called the inmates development programme, which was part of a rehabilitation programme that consists of sports and recreational activities, as well as health and wellness.

Through his expertise, he was hired by the government of St Lucia in the Caribbean to share his skills with correctional officers in Bordelais prison.

The camps are active weekly Gym Squads which have seen hundreds of South Africans getting to reboot their lifestyles.

To get more information on the Bar-One Gym Squads, follow them on Facebook: BarOne South Africa and Twitter: @BarOne_SA