250 students from elementary schools and middle schools throughout Los Angeles County came out to the 4th Annual Lakers Fit For Life Health Fair on April 16th for an afternoon of nutrition lessons and fun exercise with the Laker Girls and Laker players. This health fair was part of Fit For Life with the Los Angeles Lakers, an initiative aimed at educating the community about the importance of physical fitness and nutrition.
The centerpiece of Fit For Life with the Los Angeles Lakers is a website (www.nba.com/lakers/community/fitforlife) that provides all Lakers fans with fitness tips from Lakers players, Laker Girls and Lakers training staff, as well as healthy cooking recipes and nutrition advice from celebrity chef Marsh Mokhtari. To encourage local elementary school and middle school students to visit the site, the Lakers launched the Fit For Life Video Contest. In the Fit For Life Video Contest, schools were encouraged to submit a 2 minute video on how they keep their school Fit for Life. The Top 5 schools in the Fit For Life Video Contest won an invitation for 50 students to attend the Lakers Fit For Life Health Fair.
Upon arriving at the Lakers Fit For Life Health Fair, each student received a Fit For Life with the Los Angeles Lakers t-shirt and a healthy lunch, consisting of turkey, lettuce and tomato sandwiches from Jersey Mike’s and organic bananas, oranges and apples from Melissa’s World Variety Produce. After fueling their bodies, the students fueled their minds by hearing a presentation from celebrity Chef Marsh Mokhtari. Mokhtari fused his expertise in healthy cooking and the Extreme Chef physicality together to bring about the Fit for Life Extreme Chef Challenge. The students were asked to run relay races in order to earn healthy ingredients to make a sandwich. Next, it was the Laker Girls who got the students stretched and active by teaching them warm-up exercises and dance moves. Once the students were warmed-up, they were ready for the highlight of the afternoon: exercise stations with the Lakers players.
Metta World Peace, Earl Clark, Chris Duhon, Devin Ebanks and Player Development Coach Phil Handy all came out to the Health Fair to lead the students in exercise at the different stations of schoolyard games, including: variations of tag: Catch the Dragon’s Tail and Blob, limbo, and basketball cone drills. The students rotated from station to station, so each student had a chance to play in each game and to compete with the Lakers players. Each student was given a Lakers gift bag and left with memories of a fun afternoon and the tools to be fit for life.