Family Fitness Ideas – Getting Fit As a Family
Engaging your family in fitness doesn’t need to be challenging; making exercise enjoyable and promoting healthy habits are simple ways of making fitness part of their everyday lives.
Have your family take part in family HIIT workouts or bodyweight exercises at home. Work towards reaching common goals such as running or cycling faster or doing more pushups each week – these could all make great family exercises!
1. Get Outside
Stepping up physical fitness as a family helps both children and parents establish healthy behaviors, and can also be enjoyable, inspiring, and motivational!
Consider making fitness part of a weekly family event, such as game night or workout sessions with a trainer or group class at your local gym. Create a deck of fitness exercise cards (hearts for push ups, clubs for crunches, diamonds for jumping jacks and spades for squats) using standard playing cards and assign each family member one to complete any number of assigned exercises as indicated on that card. Let each family member choose one card before performing as many assigned exercises as specified on that card.
Start walking, jogging, or riding bikes around your neighborhood, to your child’s after-school activities, errands and appointments. Use a pedometer to keep track of daily steps together as a family; set monthly step goals together using this device; organize family fitness events to celebrate health-related holidays like Heart Health Month, National Physical Fitness and Sports Month or Walk to School Day; set monthly fitness goals together using this device as well.
2. Make It a Game
Parents and siblings set an important example when it comes to fitness for their children, so make it enjoyable and make fitness fun together! There are plenty of exercises that don’t require equipment – try biking or walking instead of driving when going places like the grocery store and sports events for an economical but high-energy workout, using a pedometer or sticker chart as progress monitors.
Active games such as tag and relay races, dancing parties to hip hop music and dancing, or frisbee are great ways to work up a sweat while burning up to 400 calories an hour!
Create an exercise card deck using standard playing card suits (hearts for push ups, clubs for crunches and spades for squats) and allow each person to pick a card from it. Race each other to complete as many exercises indicated on their respective card as possible! Challenge one another to see who can complete more.
3. Set Goals
Families may aim to reach one or more specific fitness goals, like losing weight or increasing daily activity levels, or setting more broad wellness objectives such as adopting healthier eating habits or decreasing screen time.
Your clients should create realistic family fitness goals that are achievable and reasonable. For instance, if your clients wish to increase their daily physical activity levels by engaging in 30 minutes of fun exercise multiple days of the week as their goal.
Use a pedometer, register for a local 5K race and train together, or create a deck of cards using standard playing cards that symbolize various exercises (hearts for push ups, clubs for crunches and spades for squats). Draw one from the deck for each family member and have them complete as many activities it calls for as directed.
4. Create Challenges
If you want to turn fitness into an ongoing challenge for your family, try setting an ambitious fitness goal as an undertaking together. This could range from entering a 5K run or cycling race, to overhauling your diet in order to address specific health concerns like food allergies and gluten intolerance.
Your family could also challenge themselves to complete active chores within a set amount of time (for instance, pick up all toys before one song ends or vacuum your living room in two). Or host a pushup competition where everyone attempts to perform as many pushups in one minute as they possibly can and award prizes to those who accomplish the most or can create laughter among their fellow competitors.
Create your own fitness exercise cards using standard playing cards: hearts represent pushups, clubs for crunches and diamonds for jumping jacks. Set the music to an engaging workout video and invite everyone to join you in playing this card game!
5. Make It Fun
Family fitness ideas that engage children include activities such as dance parties, disc golf and simple tag or freeze-tag. When watching movies together, turn commercial breaks into fitness breaks with exercises such as jumping jacks or marching in place during commercial breaks – you could even give these exercises silly names such as “princess sit-ups” or “Bob the Builder muscle builders.”
Setting goals and creating challenges are excellent ways to engage families. Use an app that lets you compete against one another or set an increase/decrease goal like daily steps taken or decreasing time spent using electronic devices, making sure to offer positive reinforcement when someone meets a goal or completes physical activity challenges.