Now that you have your beloved kids at home for the entire day, it’s time you spend some quality time together. Yes, you may want a few minutes to yourself, especially when it comes to exercising, but if you include them it’s going to be even more fun and rewarding. What is more, you will set a good example for your kids that exercising is important and good and that it can be really fun.
Run Around the Backyard
If your backyard allows it, do some running and jogging around it with your kids. You can even play some games or set an obstacle course that can challenge everyone in the family. Also, you can play some fun and energetic games, such as “Green light, Red light” and set an exercise and whenever someone says “Red light” stop with the exercise and continue on “Green light”. However, since you’re going to be running around, make sure to have appropriate shoes for everyone so you would avoid any injuries. You can easily do some research online here and see which shoes are great for everyone.
Try Some Yoga
For those who are looking for something more relaxing that might be interesting to their kids as well, you should try yoga. Even though some poses can be challenging, there are plenty of kid-friendly poses that can provide a nice stretch for the whole family.
For example, you can all try the frog pose where you go down in a deep wide squat with your feet pointing outward. You can even hop up and down like a frog and have a competition on how many hops you can all get before you start laughing. Another one that is kid-friendly and fun is the tree pose. Here you want to bring the sole of one foot to the knee of the other leg and find the balance. Then you should all bring your palms together on your chest and simply practice your one-legged balance. And to make things more fun, you can challenge your kids to bring their hands up above their heads just like tree branches.
Build up Your Strength
Your kids can do some exercising with you and have fun, but they can pose as weights if you want some additional weight for your strength exercises. Your kids will love doing these with you so you should try some of the variations. One of them is doing your regular plants, but have a kid sit on your back to make it more intense. Also, you use the same method for some pushups, especially if they already got tired from their own pushups. And if you’d like to do some situps, you can have your kid hold your feet while you do a rep, then return the favor for theirs.
You can even do some squats together. Kids are natural squatters because of their hip flexibility and you can even have a small competition on who can squat the deepest or do the most squats in one minute. What is more, once their little legs get tired, you can pick them up and use them as the additional weight for your last reps. The same can be done with lunges. Show them how to do it properly and have a little lunge walk around the house and have some fun.
Staying at home doesn’t mean that all you can do as a family is sit around and watch TV. Instead, you can have some fun with daily exercise routines for everyone. Your kids will love it, they will get some exercise, you will set a great example and they might even get tired earlier and go to bed.
Photo by Allen Taylor on Unsplash
