How To Get Your Kids To Exercise

If you’re a parent, you want your child to have an easier road to travel. You want them to have more. You want a better lifestyle, better education and even want your children to make better choices. If you’re presently fighting excess pounds or a condition that improves when you workout, you probably don’t want your children to face the same challenges and are looking for ways to get your kids to exercise.

You are their role model, make time to play.

If you’re constantly on your phone or computer, what do you expect from your child? Sure, you go to the gym, but the kids don’t realize that or see you working out. Take a break and have some fun. Play with the kids, but make sure it’s active play. Your children are never too young or old for that. Whether it’s playing lawn games, hide-and-seek, basketball or hula hooping, it’s all active and it’s all good. Make a family hour every day when you walk, bike ride or play active games.

Be their workout star.

If you go to the gym three times a week, workout with the kids the other days. The workout should be age-based and fun. You can do calisthenics, track the steps or miles you walk together or have any type of workout goal. Set goals with the kids. Maybe it’s riding the bike down the block and back three times, if your children are young. Maybe it’s running at the track or even having a sponge race, where you race to transfer water from a bucket on one side of the yard to a bucket on the other side by soaking it up in a sponge in one and squeezing it out in the other.

Make family outings and gifts activity related.

Instead of a new video game or laptop, how about a set of roller blades, a basketball and hoop or a bike? Having family contests like hula hoop contests or family trips like hiking, can also boost the love of activity. It can be as traditional as skiing or family football or a little more unusual like water aerobics. You’ll be boosting the probability of your child living a healthy, active lifestyle, while creating family memories.

• Change your habits and you’ll change theirs. Take the stairs and not the elevator. Make it a race that’s fun. Park further from the store and walk more. You’ll get more exercise and save gas!
• Combine exercise with education. Take a walk in a nature preserve and identify animals. Visit a museum or aquarium, it’s a lot of walking. Take books on wild life and see if you can identify plants, birds and animals you see on the way.
• Make chores more active and more fun. Set a timer to race through them or turn on music and dance away. If you’re doing yard work, don’t leave out the fun. If your child raked a pile of leaves, let them jump into it.
• The American Academy of Pediatrics says children should spend less than an hour or two a day of any type of electronic screen media. Too much screen time can cause stress and disrupt sleep.

For more information, contact us today at Prime Fitness