5 Tips for Exercise at Home with the Family

The school holidays will involve a lot more time spent at home this year due to COVID-19. However, that doesn’t mean they can’t be memorable, active and fun!

In today’s blog, Longevity Exercise Physiology and Personal Training in Edgecliff, Lindfield, Marrickville, Randwick and Drummoyne discuss our top 5 tips to keep you and the whole family fit and healthy over the school holidays and ongoing whilst we spend more time at home.

1. Family Exercise Physiology

The team at Longevity Exercise Physiology have the expertise to get any member of the family moving. Whether you are a child, teenager, parent, grandparent or great grandparent we can assist you with your health-related goals.

These are just some of the goals we are currently helping our clients with:

– Learning how to use home equipment with correct technique.

– Improving strength in bodyweight exercises and daily activities

– Increasing running distances and times with specific drills and technique work.

– Pre-surgery rehabilitation for shoulders, knees and hips.

– Improving balance and increasing ability to perform daily tasks around the home in older clientele.

– Achieving 60 minutes of physical activity per day for 5-17-year olds whilst not at home more.

– Learning sport-specific strength training for children and adolescents to ensure they return to sport fit and strong.

We are able to offer single, paired or group sessions via telehealth or home visits. We are also still able to do 1 on 1 sessions in outdoor spaces.

2. Get everyone involved

A great way to get the whole family involved is by having each family member contribute to the weekly exercise plan. This could simply be done by creating a rotation system where each family member is in charge of writing up a schedule of exercise for one week. Other ideas could be getting each family member to choose one activity per week that the whole family can do together or getting each person to create one workout per week. This will help to hold the family accountable and motivate each other during these difficult times.

3. Set Goals

Setting a goal and writing it down on paper is a helpful way for you to reflect on what you want to achieve during this time. We recommend getting each family member to come up with 2-3 goals they want to achieve in the next 2-3 months. The next step is to come up with a list of steps or tasks that you need to do in order to achieve each goal.

A few examples of specific physical goals are listed below. These can be adjusted to suit any level and age!

– Touch your toes when sitting with straight legs out in front

– 10 push ups on your feet

– 1 min plank hold

– Increase the number of squats you can do in 1min

– Increase amount of time you can stand on one leg with your eyes shut

– Hold wheel pose for 30 seconds

– Hold a handstand for 5 seconds

4. Make it fun

Exercise doesn’t have to be a chore. You may have already started to get creative with your couches, steps around the house, chairs or household items. Can you try to create an exercise session that uses one household item; it could be a heavy book, tinned cans, a chair or a ball. This could be a good way to get the kids involved as well, by getting them to pick an item and see what exercises they can come up with.

 

5. Make it a challenge

Nothing like some friendly competition to get you moving more! Challenges are great way to get some extra physical activity in without even trying.

One idea is to draw up a weekly table with each family members name in the columns and 5-10 exercises in the rows, for example, 5 push ups, 10 squats, 30 second hip flexor stretch, or 15 star jumps. Then each day of the week each family member ticks off which exercises they got through each day. The person with the most exercises ticked off per week gets a reward! By challenging your family and sticking together it will keep you all coping a lot better during this time.

What other challenges can you come up with?

 

 

 

— Written by Courtney Maher

 

Longevity is here to help you make your health a priority. We are the experts in preventing and managing chronic health conditions and injuries and improving strength, balance, coordination, mobility and aerobic fitness in individuals of any age.

Give us a call on 1300 964 002 if you have any questions or would like to enquire about how we can help you.