Making Fitness Fun!

Healthy Family

A healthy lifestyle is an active lifestyle. Whether you exercise for a few minutes longer every day or set yourself new fitness goals, the important thing is to motivate your family to be more active so that everyone stays healthy.

  • Illustration of a foot that seems to be running

    Kids and teenagers should get at least 1 hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day.

  • To help to build muscle and strong bones they should do strengthening activities, such as climbing, jumping, running; at least three days of the week.

  • Finland is known for producing some of the most physically fit children in Europe.

We all know fueling an active lifestyle with healthy foods is essential!

Teaching your children to make nutritious food and drink choices to supplement physical activity is key to long term involvement in fitness and health.

Here’s how you can get your family more active;

  1. Lead by example: We must lead by example if we want our children to acquire active lifestyle habits. If you want your kids to be energetic and physically active you need to showcase these behaviour yourself! After all a healthy and active body has so many more benefits than just physical; we see benefits in mental health and social interactions skills such as teamwork and leadership too!
  2. Change your mindset: What helps a lot is to model the behaviour we’d like to see in our children. Kids who regularly see their parents having fun with a sport or physical activity are more like to want to get active too. So, make sure you are making time to be active as a family! The more your kids enjoy doing something, the more they’ll want to keep doing it. Trying doing activities together such as kicking the football around, trying rock-climbing, playing volleyball or basketball, going on a bike ride, orienteering or simply playing catch!
  3. Scale activity to your children’s needs: Help them by making sure the activity is appropriate for your child’s physical abilities so that it’s fun for them yet challenging enough too yet they get to experience a sense of accomplishment as well. When in doubt, make it FUN first, and as long as everyone’s safe forget about the rules.
  4. Plan ahead: Don’t let the season determine how active your kids are. With a little forward planning they can always be getting a little sweat on. Kids also do well with routine and knowing that on certain days of the week, or weekends of the month, they or you as a family are going to be doing something.
  5. Variety is the spice of life: We are all different and so are our likes, passions and preferences! Encourage kids and teenagers to try different sports or activities so they can find one or more that they really enjoy and want to continue with.
  6. Encourage after school activities: Sometimes walking home from a long day of school is more than enough physical activity for our kids. But if you don’t live within walking distance of the school, or it’s appropriate for your kids to do more, here’s a list of after-school activities that will keep them physically active: Dance classes, Swim training, Team sports, Gymnastics and Martial Arts

One Simple Change

Lead by Example

It’s easy to think “Do as I say, not as I do,” but we can’t expect our kids to be active when they see us glued to a device, or struggling to get out from under the TV.
If we want our kids to be more energetic and physically active, we need to go device-free too, until a designated time and place.