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Walk and Workout: New DVDs for People who have Intellectual Disabilities

Published: 2006-09-01

September 2006

7.5 million Americans with Intellectual Disabilities Get Help Fighting the US Epidemic of Obesity

It’s daily fare in the news:

• The number of overweight children six-years-old and up  has tripled since 1980
• The number of overweight children two-to six-years-old has doubled since 1980
• Sixty-three percent of Americans are overweight or obese
• Only 37 percent of American adults participate in regular physical activity

We eat more, we weigh more, and we exercise less. And, as a result, our rates of serious disease have skyrocketed. Heart disease, now the leading cause of death in the United States, is twice as common in inactive people as in active people. Forty-one million Americans are pre-diabetic; most of these adults will develop Type 2 diabetes within ten years. Late onset Type 2 diabetes, once thought to be a disease of adults, is becoming more and more common in children and teens.  

For most of us though, a solution is within reach. Research shows that as little as 30 minutes of exercise a day offers significant health benefits. Most adults and children have the intellectual ability to carve out some time and get moving by joining a health or sports club, following an exercise video, or reading a fitness book.

But for the 7.5 million Americans with intellectual disabilities, joining a club, reading a fitness book, or following along to a video is not so easy. Without programs tailored to this population’s needs and abilities, this group—with an obesity rate double that in the population at large—can find it difficult to find a fitness program that meets their needs.

The release of two new programs from IRIS Media:
• Work Out with Sonny and Pedro: Walk, Dance, and Stretch Your Way to Fitness and
• Walk Your Way to Fitness: Walk, Workout, Be Active for People with Intellectual Disabilities
has just made the job of finding an appropriate program a little bit easier. Both programs feature youth and adults with intellectual disabilities learning about and modeling healthy lifestyle and formal exercise activities.

Work Out with Sonny and Pedro is a nine-workout DVD that includes beginner and intermediate workouts, including walk workouts, strength and flexibility workouts, and dance workouts. Introduced by two animated characters, Sonny and her coach, Pedro the Pedometer, each routine provides a complete workout that tones the body and builds aerobic endurance. Each routine includes a warm-up, a workout, and a cool down.

Walk Your Way to Fitness is a three-disk program that includes two DVDs and one CD-ROM with a printable workbook. The first DVD features a walking class with two coaches who guide class members through nine group coaching sessions. Class members learn how to use a pedometer and strategies for maintaining a successful walking program. Animated characters, Sonny and Pedro, reinforce key concepts in a short cartoon at the end of each class. The second DVD includes the nine workouts featured on the Work Out with Sonny and Pedro DVD. The printable workbook on CD-ROM includes 80 fun activity pages that follow along with the nine walking-class sessions.

Funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, both programs were developed by IRIS Media’s team of experts in fitness and developmental disabilities and were evaluated by youth and adults with intellectual disabilities.

For families, public libraries, and schools or transitional living programs looking for well-designed programs tailored to the needs of youth and adults with intellectual disabilities, these two new releases from IRIS Media offer an engaging and effective option.

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Product Information
Title: Work Out with Sonny and Pedro: Walk, Dance, & Stretch Your Way to Fitness
Age: 16 years and older 
Running Time: 180 minutes
Language: English with English subtitles
Release Date: September 2006
ISBN: 1-932969-13-6  
 Price: $40.00

Author: Barbara Littman