Getting your kids started

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So you want to start exercising with you kids? Where do you begin? Does it have to be formal training? What equipment do I need?
Well I will try to answer these questions and more.
Exercising with children is as easy as walking outside, going to a park, or making a bit of room downstairs. Kids and Exercise is not usually a formal time of physical training.
Everyone has watched children do the three main point of fitness for kids: flexibility, endurance, and strength. While watching children play on a playground you’ve seen them run as they play tag that is endurance, then the group of kids will take turns crossing monkey bars or scale a climbing wall. And finally you’ve seen kids show off their flexibility when they bend down to pick up a ball without any stutters in the motion. These three areas should be equally focused on in any time you spend in exercising with your kids. Let me tell everyone right now, teaching children to exercise does not have to be formal lifting weights or doing aerobics. For most kids I wouldn’t suggest that at all. For the average child just playing with some parental direction will pull these three areas of fitness together for any child.
Lets run through an example of fitness training for a child. Depending on the age of your children and their current ability just adapt things to suit them.
Warm up- This is just to get everyone’s blood going and their muscles warmed up. Now by everyone I mean the adult too. If you don’t do this with your kids, they will not see the fun only the work. Take them for a brief walk, then start hopping, jumping, stomping, flying your arms while jogging. Let this be a follow the leader game, an older child can be the leader or take some suggestions on what they want to do. Remember this is fun.
Stretching- This is a continuation of the warm up phase. Children can try to touch the sky, reach for the ground without bending the knees, or have them pretend to glue their shoes in place while they reach out for the side walls. While holding onto a small tree they can sit pretend to sit back making sideways ‘V’. They can be the Jolly Green Giant and climb up and down the beanstalk. (pretend only) Another great one is to sit down on the grass with their legs out in front of them and pretend to row a boat. You can sing while you do this and don’t forget you are the captain and he has to row too.
The Main Workout- make an obstacle course from items in your back yard. Lets say you have them run around the wheel barrow, roll down the hill, run across to the tree while there jump up and down ten times, then race to the house and do five star jumps and crawl like a bear back to wheel barrow. You can time them or do it with them to see who wins, or make a contest out of it and the person who does the course the most times in five minutes doesn’t have to take the trash out. Then just for fun do the course backwards.
Cool down- take a walk to your neighbors house or to a pond or ride your bikes for awhile. This is not intended to make you out of breath but to gently ease your body back into its regular routine.

All of this might take twenty minutes to half and hour. We can all afford to spend more time with our kids. Soon you will see your kids displaying more energy, sleeping better, and focusing better during times of instruction. A fun thing to look out for is when your kids get together with other children, they might start leading them on this obstacle course routine. It is then that you know you have succeeded in making working out fun for you kids.