Most people know the importance of exercise as part of healthy living. To ensure that your entire family stays healthy, you need to find activities you can do together to stay physically active. Nowadays, most activities are indoors and relatively sedentary. If you are not careful, you can go months without exercising and not even realize it. This is why you need to encourage your kids to stay active with you. You can do this by emphasizing the benefits of an active lifestyle. For example, exercise can mean fewer visits to the chiropractor service or depression clinic. It has lots of mood-boosting effects.
Instead of chasing your kids out the door, you can arrange to go outside together so you can do things as a family. That will give you lots of time to destress and bond. You should schedule time for it to ensure that you don’t go for long periods without exercising. You can do a lot of different activities so exercise doesn’t feel forced. You can pick up some family sports, build obstacle courses, or work in the garden together. These exercise ideas for the whole family may seem silly but you will benefit greatly from staying active.
Set Goals
This is probably the first step to take if you are looking for exercise ideas for the whole family. You can start by establishing goals that you can achieve as a family. When you start, chances are you won’t be able to achieve all your objectives. However, the more you stick with it, the more exercise becomes part of your family’s routine. To make this work, you need to set specific goals. They should also be achievable and flexible. For instance, rather than saying you will spend more time exercising, list something like walking for half an hour daily, four times a week.
You can also start a challenge for your family to see who will be the first to achieve their goals. It would be a good idea to reward the one who comes first. That will encourage everyone to commit. There are lots of downloadable activity guides for families. This can be a good start for you. You can come up with your own to make things even more fun.
Plan An Exercise Schedule
To ensure you don’t skip exercise times, you should devise an activity schedule for your family. This will also allow you to plan different exercise ideas for the whole family, knowing that no single exercise can take care of all your physical activity needs. You should mix the activities to ensure that your family gets the most from the lineup. Exercise is more like a diet plan. You can’t just stick to eating fruits even if they are healthy. This is why you need to combine different activities for different benefits. Some exercises are for strength, and some are for your heart health.
Get Walking
You don’t always have to pay money if you are looking for exercise ideas for the whole family. When you decide to lead a healthier life with your family, all you need to do is get creative. Believe it or not, if there’s space for you to walk, you can exercise with your family. You can take your kids and go for a walk any time of the day, or even take your dog to the nearest animal health care center on foot, as long as it’s safe. It’s true that not everyone indeed stays where there are safe walking trails. Still, you can do some walking on your property, or you can go to the nearest park.
If there are no parks near you, another good idea would be to find a road that doesn’t have a lot of traffic. The idea is to move and spend some quality time with your family. You can also plan a hike with your family to take things further. If you are lucky, there may be great places to hike near your location. You can check out if there are any state parks near you or if there are any mountains close by. Once you find something along those lines, all you need to do is follow the beautiful trails, and you can get everyone’s heart rate up as you enjoy the scenery. This is another fun and inexpensive way to put some exercise hours on your family’s to-do list.
Make Time to Play
As simple as this may sound, creating time for play is another great way to add to your exercise ideas for the whole family. All you need to do is set aside half an hour at least three times a week to do some fun exercises with your family. You can even make this part of your after-school routine. It’s also easier to create play time during the weekends when everyone is at home. You can choose activities depending on the ages of your children. Younger kids would appreciate games like hopscotch or hide-and-seek.
On the other hand, if your kids are older, you can simply kick a soccer ball around. You can also shoot hoops if they are into basketball. You should also consider planning at least one family activity per weekend. This can be as simple as taking your kids to the playground or the nearest swimming pool. The key to getting everyone moving is to plan lots of activities. You can also start by limiting TV time. That will create time for your to move around and find some competitive and noncompetitive activities to do with your family. When you explore lots of activities, you will eventually find something you and your kids will enjoy doing together. You can then stick to that in the long run.
Sing and Dance When You Clean
This is another excellent one to add to your exercise ideas for the whole family. You don’t necessarily have just to turn the radio on and dance nonstop. Well, you can do that, but you can also multitask. For instance, you can set aside some time for household chores and turn the music on as you do them with your family. Playing music as you clean makes your chores less boring and allows you to exercise. If the cleaning is fun, your little children will enjoy helping. They can pick up toys from the floor or sweep them using the broom. Your older kids can help with dusting, vacuuming, and making beds.
Besides cleaning the house’s interior, you can also enjoy the music outdoors. You just have to make sure you don’t upset your neighbors. Seasonal yard work can be a great exercise if you do it together. Your younger children can assist with things like planting and tending your garden. On the other hand, the older ones can rake leaves or shovel snow, depending on the season. As the snow is shoveled, you can build a snow fort or crate families or communities of snow people.
Winter Workouts
Exercise ideas for the whole family are generally weather specific. You can do certain things in winter that won’t be possible during the summer months and vice versa. For instance, when temperatures drop and the snow starts falling, jogging and cycling can become much more difficult. Jogging can even be unsafe. However, this doesn’t mean you have to sit on the couch and do nothing all winter. There are lots of indoor activities that you can do with your family. You can also do some outdoor ones as well. For instance, you can walk to your local mall and window shop with your family. You should try to use the stairs and avoid the elevator whenever you go out.
Another way to get some exercise hours in during winter would be to clean your home regularly. There’s no need to wait for spring so you can do some cleaning. You can still do some chores and keep your home neat during the colder months. For instance, you can wash the inside of your windows and vacuum the carpets. You can also organize your home and clean out the closets. These are great ideas to give everyone a chance at some physical activity.
Walk around your building’s hallways during your lunch or coffee break. If you don’t have a lot of chores at home, another great idea would be to watch and follow exercise videos online.
Cold weather doesn’t mean you are stuck indoors. You can still go outside with the kids. Just make sure you don’t spend all day there. You can go sledding or ice skating with your family. That’s lots of physical activity for everyone. You can also have a snowball fight with the kids or make some snow angels together.
Build a Home Gym
There is a lot you can benefit from lifting weights. It’s a great way to help strengthen your muscles and boost your metabolism. You can even buy weights and build a home gym in the basement for everyone. This would be a great way to ensure that everyone has a place to exercise when they want to. Unfortunately, building a home gym may not be as easy as creating an obstacle course in your basement. You will actually need to invest some time and money into it.
There is a lot of information out there about the things you should and shouldn’t do. The first thing you may want to do is identify a space in your home that you can turn into a home gym. If you have an unfinished basement, now would be the time to finish it. Not only will this give you a space to exercise, but it will also increase the value of your property significantly. Once you have identified and prepared the space you intend to use as a home gym; the next step would be to identify what you need to place in your gym. This requires lots of hours of research. You should do product comparisons, go through reviews and look for the most affordable options without compromising quality. You should also identify gym equipment that’s children-friendly, so your kids can also use the gym. However, try not to leave them in there unmonitored.
Build a Ninja Course
Have you watched the show American Ninja Warrior? If not, then you might want to look for it. Though it normally comes to TV in the summer, which is usually the busiest time for families, it would be great to watch it. You will find that such shows can actually encourage kids to be more active. Once you are done watching, they will start wanting their own ninja course. The difficult part is getting around to building them one. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. You can have lots of fun creating the obstacle course.
Take Up a Sport
One of the best ways to stay active and fit as a family is to take up a sport. That will help keep you healthy all year round. There are lots of sports that you can adopt as a family. Apart from exercise, you can also turn your sport into a form of quality time. Sports like basketball are a great way to have fun with your entire family. However, unless you have a family of eighteen, you will not be able to play full teams. Fortunately, nothing will stop you from creating small teams according to the number of people available. Even two people can play the sport.
Another great sport that can get everyone running is soccer. This is one of the world’s most popular sports, so almost everyone already has an idea of how to play it. The best thing about soccer is you only need one piece of equipment: a ball. You can come up with makeshift goals when it comes to the rest of it. Just like with basketball, you can also create teams of any size. When picking exercise ideas for the whole family, you should be careful not to strain yourself too much. Remember, you and the kids have different energy levels. You don’t want to end up on back pain relief medications. If you do find yourself facing back pain or another kind of joint or muscle pain, it’s a sign that you should slow down a little.
There are lots of opportunities to exercise with your family. You just have to be creative about things. Apart from the regular stuff you do with your family, you can also take advantage of any large gatherings of kids. That’s a great chance to play a team sport. Find the nearest soccer field or swimming pool, and you can find many exercise ideas to implement. Regular exercise can mean fewer sickness-related visits to the medical center. However, there’s more to health than exercising. Apart from exercising regularly, you should also go for regular medical checkups with your family. You must never ignore things like allergy testing for your kids. It’s also essential to visit ear doctors, asthma doctors, and physical therapy specialists to get back pain relief or relief from any other ailments you may be facing.
