Evolution Lifestyle Fitness in Raleigh, NC, is focused of family fitness, getting and staying fit at all ages is important. However, there are many great family exercises and activities that can also aid in keeping the whole family fit. One important way parents can help their children lead an active lifestyle is to limit both computer and TV time for all family members, including mom and dad. Instead, schedule a more active option like riding bikes or shooting hoops. Even playing tag can be quite a workout for most people.
Take a walk together or go for a hike.
Your walk should be in your schedule, something you do after dinner every night or a brisk walk in the morning before work starts if you’re an early morning riser. On weekends, you can make that walk in a local park or other natural setting. Hiking is also a great way for the family to enjoy each other’s company and bond. Don’t forget to take a healthy picnic lunch and get the kids involved in making it.
Yard work, gardening and chores can be quite a workout and even fun.
You might not think that yard work or chores could be fun, but maybe you haven’t done them all together. Weeding a garden can be a contest, making it a race to see who gets the biggest pile. Just make the pile a short distance from the garden so everyone has to pull a few and get up and run to stack their weeds. Create a song parody about work from a familiar song with upbeat rhythm, such as If You’re Happy and You Know It and sing together as you work. It changes the mood from just doing tasks to fun.
Have a dance-off in the living room.
Turn on the music and start your moves. Dancing with the kids can be a blast. Is there a favorite song you can dramatically act out as you dance? That adds to the fun. If you don’t dance, don’t worry. Just move to the music and the kids will help you learn new moves. Dancing is a full body workout and you’ll be surprised at how tiring it can be when you have a playlist with just a short break between songs. Vary the rhythm of the songs so you have slower beats moving to faster ones and back down to a few minutes of slower music before the dance off ends. It provides the perfect warm up and cool down.
- Just exercise, but challenge each other. You’ll each have different goals, so the challenge will be to complete your own goal or even do a few extra sets. Winner gets to choose the next family activity.
- Create new healthy meals together. It’s not an exercise, but it’s a healthy family activity. It not only teaches children how to cook healthy meals, it makes it more likely that they’ll eat it, when they helped prepare it.
- Whether it’s a U-Pick strawberries, blueberries, peaches or apples, it’s hard work and also a lot of fun. The experience also provides a learning opportunity about where food comes from and how it’s grown.
- Teach them to give back and get fit at the same time with volunteer work. It doesn’t have to be as formal as Habitat for Humanity, but can be as simple as helping an older neighbor with tasks.
For more information, contact us today at Evolution Lifestyle Fitness