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Child bodybuilding: How buff is your kid?
Pageant dads, ambitious trainers are turning children's strength training into an industry
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By Eric Spitznagel
updated 7/17/2011 1:03:17 PM ET



Unlike most 7-year-olds, Giuliano Stroe spends much of his playtime in his family’s Ciuresti, Romania, gym, lifting weights and toning his muscle-ripped prepubescent body. In one workout video recently posted on his popular YouTube page — Stroe’s videos have been viewed 13 million times — Giuliano benchpresses twice his body weight, flexes his biceps, and then growls at the camera like a cherubic Hulk Hogan. The boy owns Guinness World Records for (1) the shortest amount of time to walk 10 meters on one’s hands with a medicine ball between one’s legs and (2) the number of “air push-ups” — which are like normal push-ups except much harder, since one’s feet aren’t allowed to touch the ground. Stroe completed 20 without breaking a sweat.
Iulian Stroe claims his son became obsessed with strength training as a 2-year-old, if not earlier. “He has been going to the gym with me ever since he was born,” Iulian told the Austrian Times online newspaper last year. The hard work is paying off; Iulian recently announced that Tokyo-based Fuji Television Network paid him €1,000 (roughly $1,400) for a 30-second clip of his son in action. He declined to speak to Bloomberg Businessweek because, he says, he only does TV interviews now.
The Stroes have become icons of a child bodybuilding netherworld that was, until recently, merely a dream of enterprising trainers and testosterone-fueled pageant dads. According to market research firm IBISWorld, gyms and health clubs have become increasingly popular among the Care Bears set. “Youth memberships have become one of the fastest growth areas for the fitness club industry,” says IBIS senior research analyst Taylor Hamilton. “And many clubs have begun shifting their focus to this area.” Over the past five years pre-adolescent and teen memberships have increased by 2.9 percent annually — and the 6-to-11 age category has almost doubled since 2005....................>>>>............................>>>>...............http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43770379/ns/business-us_business/