Exercises to Do as a Family

by Brooke Whistance; image: pixabay.com

When you have a family of your own, you are not just responsible for your own health and well-being but are also responsible for the people around you in your house. Everything that you do will not only affect you but have a direct or indirect effect on your family as well. It is easy to shape a child’s brain by being the prime example of what you are preaching them to be. If you want your child to be a grown up with good mannerisms and respect for everything that nature has blessed us with, then you would need to show them how to be loving and caring.

Similarly, the groceries that you bring and the food that you eat not only supplies you with nourishment but your children and your partner as well. You may have a healthy balanced diet which will undoubtedly be adopted by your family. Yet things may get complicated if you have a workout routine and you want to include your kids along with you. Most exercises that you do in the gym are not appropriate for kids under the age 16 to be performed. So here are a few exercises that you can do as a family.

Pre and Post Dinner Walks:

Walking is one of the healthiest and easiest out of all forms of exercise. All you need is to go out to the street and decide which direction to go to. Going for a walk before a meal, or 30 minutes after consuming a food is a good daily exercise to stay fit. This will not only provide you with exercise but also lets you spend quality time with your family. You may decide how long you want to keep the walk, especially depending on the age of your children. If they are below 5, you may want to keep the walk 15-20 minutes long as longer walks can tire young children quickly.

Incorporating Exercise into Other Activities:

If you do not get enough time for an everyday walk around dinner time, then you can incorporate small walks in your kids’ routine by some other forms. While picking them up from school, you may park your car farther away so that they can have a small exercise. Or if you are visiting a shopping center with them, take the stairs instead of elevators or escalators. You may use the family TV time to have small breaks of exercises, such as during commercials you can plan squats, pushups, crunches or some warm up exercises.

Active Video Gaming:

If you kids are of the stay-at-home kind and would rather play video games than do something else then make their activity into an exercise for them. Go to gaming arenas that provide exergaming. These games use technology that will require you to move around so that you can play the game successfully. This will result in you exercising your muscles while you play, which if done regularly, can assist you in staying in shape.

Do Strength Training:

When kids are growing up, they have different capacities of lifting weights which means that you will need to treat them differently based on their age and strength building. Exercises that involve core building muscles can be done so at nearly any age, however, strength training should wait until your kids are well into their teen years. Either have a combined gym membership for your family so that you can work out together, or you may also purchase some small equipment on your own and have workout sessions at home.

Doing activities such as these will not only strengthen your bond with each other but will let you build a better and healthier life. You will be able to motivate each other to be in good shape while providing assistance to each other during your workout routines.