Tips For Family Fitness Fun

Engaging in 30 minutes of physical activity at least five times per week can lead to major health benefits for you and your family. Participating in fitness-related activities as a family can help you spend time together while doing something that greatly benefits your body and helps instill healthy habits in your children. By finding ways to make exercise fun, you can encourage yourself and other members of your family to develop healthy lifestyle habits.

Types of Family Exercises

Doing work-out videos and playing sports together can help you get your family involved in a regular fitness routine. Taking family walks helps keep children and even pets active. Playing physically active games with your children, such as tag and hide-and-seek, helps them learn that physical play can be fun. Many community centers offer dance or martial art classes for people of all ages. Start with beginner classes so that everyone can participate. Strength training is also important. Purchasing small dumbbells for children or allowing them to lift small soup cans can help them feel included while you do weight-training exercises.

Benefits

Exercising together can help keep each member of your family accountable and committed to staying active. Planning fun activities and engaging in several different types of exercise can help keep things interesting and make fitness fun for your whole family. Allowing a different family member to choose an activity each day helps everyone feel included and gives children and teenagers a reason to look forward to the day they get to choose.

Significance

Obesity is a wide-spread problem in the United States that increases your risk for developing Type 2 diabetes, heart problems and some types of cancer. According to 2009 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only Colorado and the District of Columbia had adult obesity rates of less than 20 percent. A study published in January 2010 in "The Journal of the American Medical Association" found that nearly 12 percent of children ages 2 to 19 were at or above the 95th percentile of the BMI-for-age growth charts. Increasing your physical activity is an excellent way to prevent and combat obesity for you and your family.

Considerations

Regular physical activity does not mean that you have to set aside specific times to exercise every day. Changing some of your lifestyle habits can help you work exercise into your daily routine. Taking time during commercials to jog in place or do jumping jacks can help get you and your children's heart rates elevated while still enjoying family television time. Choosing stairs instead of using elevators and parking further away from stores helps you work more steps into your day without taking much more time.

Warning

Do not begin an exercise program before checking with your doctor. Keep each family member's medical conditions and limitations in mind when selecting activities to do together. Always warm up for five to 10 minutes by walking and stretching before engaging in more vigorous activity. Seek medical attention for any exercise-related injury, particularly in children, since over-exerting their growing bones and muscles can lead to serious injury.