Akiva girls build self-confidence while keeping fit.

Clockwise from top:
Akiva's cardio-boxing class warms up under the direction of teacher
Stacie Hurst.

Kimber Yankee prepares third-grader Margot Gardin of Southfield
for combat.

Going one-on-one are fourth gradersOrly Benaderet of West
Bloomfield and Rachel Brown of Southfield.

DIANA LIEBERMAN
Staff Writer

t first glance, the hide girls who assem-
bled in the multipurpose room of
Yeshivat Akiva in Southfield seem like
strange candidates for wrapped wrists
and boxing gloves.
However, says Kimber Yankee, owner of Girls
Empowered, third and fourth grade is not a
moment too soon to begin developing the self-

A

confidence and secure body image the girls will
carry with them for the rest of their lives. In fact,
Yankee's Berkley-based girls' fitness studio teaches
cardio-boxing, self-defense, nutrition and other
survival skills to girls as young as 4 years old.
"By middle school, it's too late," she says. 'All
their lives they've been getting messages from socie-
ty that there is something wrong with their bodies
— from TV, from Barbie dolls, from casual remarks
by their mothers and their mothers' friends."
This is the first year Akiva has offered cardio-

boxing to its third- and fourth-grade girls. The
class meets once a week for eight weeks. Teacher
Stacie Hurst of Berkley is also an instructor in the
pre-kindergarten program at Detroit Country
Day School in Beverly Hills.
Yankee describes cadio-boxing as similar to
kick-boxing in developing upper-body strength.
"We're doing exercise, but, at the same time, we
are teaching self-esteem, showing them it's OK to
feel strong," she says. "The goal is to get to them
before they grow up hating their bodies." ED

6/1
2001

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