With more technology and activities encouraging your kids to spend more time on the couch than ever before, you may be struggling to get your kids to exercise regularly. However, it is important that your children exercise often for health reasons, as exercise can prevent illness and problems later in life. It is important to find fun ways to get your kids active, either at home or when you are out and about. 

Kids Child Summer Camp

Create an Active Backyard

One of the issues behind encouraging kids to exercise regularly is finding fun activities regularly, with many exercise-focused activities being based outside of the home. Then, you should ensure that there are equipment and spaces within your home that promote an active lifestyle for children, such as your back yard.

Your back yard is a great place to get kids to experience nature and get active without having to leave the house, and if you want to encourage your kids to exercise on a regular basis with minimal effort, you should consider transforming your yard into an active space. For instance, one of the best ways to do this is to invest in equipment, such as a trampoline, which can provide an exhilarating experience for your kids to play with.

Make Exercise a Social Activity

More than half of kids in the USA are not getting the exercise that they need, and that is why you need to find ways to allow your kids to enjoy an active lifestyle. Exercise, such as cross-country running or cycling, can be lonely, and it is more fun when you are playing sports with other people. Then, you should motivate your kids by making exercise a social activity. You could plan a family exercise-based activity every weekend or in summer evenings, such as group games like baseball or tennis, or allow them to invite a friend to these activities. This will allow them to see exercise as a fun activity where they can spend more time with their friends and the people that they care about. 

Plan Fun, Active Games

When considering how to get your kid to participate in more exercise, you need to consider finding a type of exercise or a sport that they enjoy. For instance, if they find walking or cycling boring, they are less likely to be interested in performing these. Therefore, you should think of fun and active games to play with your kids that can both combine exercise and excitement. While team sports like rounders can be a great option for this, there are also many family games that you can play outside or indoors that can maintain both the fun and the health benefits of exercise. 

Walk and Cycle to Destinations

You should also find ways to incorporate exercise into your daily routine, as this will ensure that your kids are able to exercise without even noticing the calories that they are burning off. Rather than taking the car or public transport to local destinations, you should consider opting to walk or cycle to places that they go to often, such as school. If you live in a rural area or need to travel long distances, you could also consider parking further away from your destination in order to give your children more walking time.

Create Motivation

Motivation is key to exercise for both kids and adults, and there is nothing like a prize or gift to encourage children to get up off the couch and head outside. If you are struggling to make a difference to your child’s exercise regime, you should consider creating a star chart that can track the number of times that they have exercised. When they get a certain amount of stars, they will then be gifted a prize- even if this is as simple as a bag of sweets. You should also consider other motivators such as competition or a pet to drive your kids to achieve more exercise, as this will help to add meaning to their activities.

Reduce Their Screen Time

One of the factors that have started to prevent kids from getting exercise is technology, such as video games and mobile phones, with kids between 8 and 18 typically spending 7 hours on a screen per day. Although it may be impossible to get your kids off screens entirely, try to limit their screen time. Most mobile phones and video games have parental controls that can allow you to block apps after a certain number of hours. Another option is to enforce breaks every half an hour during which your kids must exercise before returning to their game.

Encouraging your kids to exercise can be difficult. However, by making staying active fun and motivating your children to perform exercise (sometimes without even realizing it), you will be able to drive them to be healthier individuals in the future.