Five Top Tips for New Year Family Fitness for Free!
We all know the feeling: Christmas is over, we may have more round our waistline but a lot less in the bank account. With childhood obesity on the rise and national obesity levels at an all time high, this is the perfect time to kickstart your new year family fitness. But what can you do which doesn’t cost a bundle?
1 Ditch the car when doing family chores: cycle to the post office, do small shops on foot taking back packs to carry the shopping home. When shopping in town, award points to whomever can spot a ‘chance for action’: spotting the stairs instead of the escalator, choosing the manual doors instead of the automatic ones, going to the shoe shop at the top of the hill rather than the one at the bottom etc.
2 Run a fitness lucky dip: every weekend a member of the family picks a card out of the hat to find a fun fitness activity for all the family: ‘have a disco dance off’; ‘play Twister’, ‘play ‘It’s a Knockout’ in the garden’, ‘go on a nature treasure hunt’.
3 Arrange play dates with other families which involve activity – dog walks in the park, cycling to a picnic spot, ‘mountain expeditions’ involving a local hill walk where each team races to ‘plant’ their flag at the top etc.
4 Set goals and rewards for you and your family: eg ‘if we can increase our walking by 30 minutes this week we’ll use the money we saved on petrol to borrow a DVD from the library and have a family movie night.’
5 If the weather is really awful, prise the kids off their playstation and have a game of Twister, hide and seek, musical chairs, musical statues, What’s the Time Mr Wolf, charades – anything which gets everyone moving and having fun!Kids