Fun Family Exercise Tips

SB Fitness shares fun family exercise tips to help your whole family stay active this Autumn!

Family Fitness SB Fitness

As noted by Web MD, exercising is important for children and adults alike; it controls weight, reduces heart risks, helps kids make the most of school, burns off kids’ excess energy and promotes the building of healthy habits for life in children. Conversely, parents.com explains that failure to put these healthy habits in place during childhood can result in children adopting sedentary lifestyles in adulthood and being more prone to obesity. Family exercise serves a double function of keeping you all healthy whilst being an excellent excuse for quality family time!

Finding time for family exercise isn’t easy, especially given how busy parents are and how many entertainment choices children have. Children are also under increasing pressure at school with exam preparation and heavier homework responsibilities. Most of us appreciate the importance of family exercise, but simply struggle to fit it into our busy schedules. This Fun Family Exericse Tips article is designed to help the task seem a little less overwhelming!

family fitness

1. Make Time for Play

If you have young children you can start as simple as fining time for play. It could mean immediately spending time being active after playgroup or school, before your evening meal. It will be much easier to find the time for family fitness later down the line if you’ve started early. You could visit a local play part, play ball games together, dance or run. If the weather is good or you have some safe obstacle free indoor space, you could even set up mini sports day events!

girl playing

2. Do you need to drive?

Family exercise doesn’t have to finish after your evening meal. Not only will a walk help keep you active, it will also help you clear your mind and relax before you go to bed. There are many fitness tracking devices available, which you could use to stimulate a bit of competitive family fitness spirit! You can keep track of everyone’s steps on the fridge as a reminder to stay active and keep making time for fun family fitness walks.

When you have spare time at the weekend and in the evenings ahead of an event, why not walk or cycle there instead of driving or using public transport? We all make many five or ten minute trips in the car each week, which – with a small amount of forward planning – can be changed into walks or bike rides as part of your family fitness routine.

family walk

3. Family Time

Planning big family fitness weekend activities in advance is a great way of keeping the whole family active. Most councils have plenty of free or low cost family events throughout the year. You could also plan cheap weekend getaways in the UK with plenty of scenic walks and trips to beauty spots.

4. Make Music Part of Your Routine

As Budsies mentions, music is known to have many befits on childrens’ development including improving their brain power, helping their social skills and confidence. We don’t need to tell you that a soundtrack also improves any exercise activity helping to keep everyone motivated!

children dancing

5. Involve Exercise in What You Already Do

One of the quickest wins when you’re trying to improve your family fitness routine is to involve fitness in the activities you already do. If you have young children who normally sit in the supermarket trolley, ask yourself whether they could walk most of the shop. Instead of dropping your kids off at school in your car, could you get up earlier to walk them in? If you haven’t got the time before and after school, maybe you could walk them to their next play date instead of driving. Watching TV or gaming can also present fun family exercise opportunities; you could design ad break fitness games or require a certain quantity of exercise per an amount of gaming time.

6. Gardening For Fitness and Fun

Did you know that gardening is said to have many health benefits? As Spruce explains, it promotes weight loss, strengthens joints, increases flexibility, decreases blood pressure and cholesterol levels, slows osteoperosis and lowers your risk of diabetes. If you don’t have your own garden, perhaps you have a family member who would jump at the chance of your family volunteering your green fingers. Alternatively, why not look into buying an allotment?

gardening fitness

7. Set Big Goals

Fun family exercise can be made even more fun by getting competitive. Keep track of everyone’s progress racing each other and finding the fitness activities each family member enjoys and excells in the most. You could even build up to a big family fitness charity day out like a sponsored walk or run.

By

Sean Burgess
(MSc, BSc (Hons), ASCC, MGBT)
SB Fitness Founder

Email: [email protected]
Phone: 01202 282726