The holiday season is a busy and stressful time of year. It might seem harder to fit in a workout, but it’s so important to continue to get exercise. Plus, it relieves stress. To help keep you motivated and make exercise fun, try changing it up and making it more festive. Make it even more fun by including the kids. You’ll all get some exercise and quality time together.
How to Make Exercise Fun
You don’t necessarily have to create a whole new workout plan. You can make up fun new names for things you already do. Make up new festive names for different exercises like, holly jolly jumping jacks, reindeer prances, snowman squats (think of a melting melting). Your kids will just think you’re playing a game together, but you’ll all be working on better health while making exercise fun.
If your kids are old enough to talk and participate in imaginary play then get them to help make up new actions and fun names for them. The kids might just have more fun creating new ones for you to have to do. You might get so caught up in the fun of it that you even forget that you’re actually exercising.
As mentioned in my previous post, you can set a timer, play some music and try out some of those festive exercises for a few minutes each time to break up the day. If you make it a regular game with your kids it will be harder to skip the workout because they’ll be asking for it.
Fun Workouts for the Mind and Body
You can even turn your fun workout into a memory boosting activity as well. Play a game where each person comes up with an exercise and adds it to the ones that came before. You’ll test your memory trying to remember the order of the actions. How many can you add on before you can’t remember the order any more? Now you’re not just making exercise fun and your improving physical health, you’re improving your cognitive health.
Working out can be fun and serve multiple purposes. It’s good for your physical health, but it can also improve your mood and create a bonding experience with your kids at the same time. It also teaches your kids that movement is fun not work. Let me know if you tried this and how it went. Did you have fun? Did your kids love it?
