Swipe your credit card at WorkOut Kid Web site

In this space, we've commented before on kids barely old enough to cross the street alone yet who are Youtube sports stars - in auto racing, boxing, billiards, tennis, gymnastics. What am I forgetting? Something, I'm sure. The billiards champ was two. The prize fighter, all of seven, had a Web site and had recorded a hit single.

I just learned about the The WorkOut Kid. He's ten and - yes, an Internet sensation. The video above has already passed one million views on YouTube. At the WorkOut Kid Web site, there are the usual opportunities to swipe a credit card - $19.99 for the WorkOut Kid DVD, $29.95 for the WorkOut Kid backpack.

Kids' gyms and fitness training also are the subject of an article this week in Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Interesting piece that mostly explores how fitness clubs are catering to younger and younger customers.

From the BW article:

Jeff Martin, director of youth programming for CrossFit Brand X, a health club in Ramona, Calif., claims his business has doubled in the past three years and that the majority of his new clients are underage. “We have kids coming into our gym now who are 2½, 3 years old,” Martin says. Brian K. Maloney, director of fitness and education at New York City’s Visions Wellness Center, believes his gym is attracting a younger crowd mainly because it allows it. “Unlike a lot of health clubs and private gyms, which won’t let you work out in the weight room unless you’re 16 or older, our insurance covers younger members,” says Maloney, who charges $70 and up for pre-adolescent sessions. “We cater to people who have the money,” he says.

I see how the adults nudging these kids to center stage are benefiting - financially and otherwise. Still waiting for a sports medicine expert to step forward to say this is healthy for kids.

Thank you, Rabbi Michael Green.

The legend of Bam Bam

Ellen DeGeneres shared the set last week with a guest who might have been all of three-feet tall. His name is Bam Bam. Actually, that's one of the names he goes by. There's also Pretty Boy. And, in a pinch, his given name, Wayne Lawrence.

Bam Bam is a seven-year-old boxer. Ellen quizzed him a bit about his nicknames, his good looks and so on. Then Bam Bam put on the gloves and, working against an adult partner, showed some flashy moves. The kid was absolutely charming and, were I to run into trouble in a dark alley, I'd feel safer with Bam Bam at my side.

That said, there's something disquieting about the marketing and packaging of a boxer two years removed from kindergarten. Ellen is just his latest gig. Bam Bam is emerging as his own multi-media enterprise, featuring a Web site, a Bam Bam documentary and, in his singing career, a new "hit" single, "It's Gonna Get Easier."

From his bio, I learned that this young man comes from "the ruff and tough south side of Toledo, Ohio," that "he's been training since he was 2 yrs old in both boxing and modeling," that he was "born on September 11 2001, right as the second plane hit the south tower on that fateful day of 911," that the adults around him are trying to lift him up and out of difficult circumstances.

I wish them luck. But my gosh, he's 7.