Welcome to your family fitness focus! This month, your goal is to hone in on small steps that each family member needs to take to get a bit more fit than they are today. The two rules for the road to consider this month are simple:
- Different strokes for different folks
- There are about as many ways to get and stay fit as there are colors in the rainbow
Here we go!
Week 1: Is each person fit?
If you had to rate everyone in the family on a fitness scale, with 1 being not fit at all and 10 being uber fit, how fit would each member of your family be? Do you have a sense of what it takes for each family member to be fit?
We toss around the term “fitness” all the time but few of us really have a sense of what activity level that amounts to each day and week. New 2008 guidelines open the door to all sorts of types of activities but also drives the point home that adults and kids are not getting enough activity each day.
2008 HHS Physical Activity Guidelines for Adults:
- 2 hours and 30 minutes of moderate aerobic activity/week or 75 minutes of vigorous activity.
- Muscle strength conditioning at least 2x a week.
- The guidelines do emphasis that “some activity is better than none” which allows for some give and take through out the week.
2008 HHS Physical Activity Guidelines for Children
- 1 hour of physical activity each day
- the majority of daily activity should be aerobic activity
- muscle conditioning at least 3x a week
- bone conditioning at least 3x a week
- According to the guidelines, “It is important to encourage young people to participate in physical activities that are appropriate for their age, that are enjoyable, and that offer variety.”
So, how do you start this month in figuring it all out?
Step 1: jot down how much activity you are all doing now and what activities everyone is participating in.
Step 2: find out what everyone wants to do to have fun while moving.
Step 3: take an honest look at everyone’s health status so you can be realistic about where each person is starting from and what special health goals each person may have to have. Is every family member just needing to stay fit? Is there someone who has a special health issue such as a diabetes, a heart condition, or obesity where an exercise plan may need to be under doctor’s supervision and with the help of a trainer? These are important considerations as you determine what path each person in your family, adults and kids, needs to start out on to get physically fit.
Step 3: while the new government guidelines are where you all want to end up, you won’t get there over night. Start small and add to your exercise prgram over time. If someone is currently doing nothing, start with 1x a week for 15-20 minutes and build from there. And, remember that walking counts when you are starting out from an inactive state.
Step 4:keep an eye on fun, variety and family fun. Find fitness times during the week you can all do something together even if you’re just taking a walk or tossing a ball around for a while. The goal is to be active every day and build from what you are doing now.
Week 2: Team Sports are not the only path to fitness
Team sports are wonderful, especially for kids, but they are not the only path towards fitness. In fact, just because a child, or adult, participates in team sports, doesn’t mean that person is fit. That sport just focuses on the skills needed for that sport and may not condition the entire body. Additionally, for kids, we have to keep in mind that they will not be able to keep up team sports participation as intensily once they become teens or young adults. In fact, by middle school, 70% of kids who had played team sports usually stop.
Encourage your kids to participate in team sports…but help them find individual sports, too. That’s the true path to life-long fitness that will help them bridge the gap some day in the not too distant future when they are no longer kids and find themselves young adults. Some amazing and fun individual sports to think about exposing your kids to include swimming, tennis, dancer, aerobics, yoga, running, biking, hiking, weight lifting, martial arts, walking, fencing, and golf.
Week 3: The kid who won’t ride a bike: The Moral of the Story
Remember my rule for the road “different strokes for different folks”? That applies to so many kids and is important to remember when it comes to helping them find sports they want to try. We learned that a couple years ago with our youngest daughter and bike riding. She can do it, and competently, but hates it. It’s truly not her thing. Put her in hiking shoes, though, and she can lap just about anyone through the longest of trails and the narrowest of paths and keep on going long after we’ve all collapsed with our water bottles. We tried every parenting trick in the book to get her to ride that bike. In the end, we eventually caved when she came to us saying: “It’s my body…why should any one care how I move it.”
Help your kids find the activities they love doing and don’t sweat it if it isn’t quite what you had in mind or what other kids are doing. As long as they are moving and having fun, who are we to judge? After all, it is their bodies!
Week 4: Fun Matters!
With so many ways to stay fit, there’s no reason fitness needs to be a grind or boring. Rule for the road #2: “There’s as many ways to stay fit as there are colors of the rainbow!” If the color of the current activity starts to fade and become dull, time to pick out a new one that reenergizes you again. The same holds true for your kids. So much is asked of our kids these days that their fit time needs to be a release…and a blast!
Closing Thoughts
Keep in mind that in addition to physicial activity, to be truly fit and healthy our bodies have to be fed correctly, our souls stimulated and our minds allowed to flex. We already talked about nutrition last month so keep that going. Soon enough we’ll cover how to keep our souls fed. Remember, small steps….
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