Page 7 - FAMILY TIMES MAGAZINE JAN 23

FAMILY TIMES -The Family Edutainment Magazine - January 2023 Edition ©

FAMILY FITNESS Keeping Fit After The Holidays.
The busy holiday season comes with its own fitness challenges as
families come together to celebrate and enjoy the season. Many of us
take a break from our regular daily routines totally neglecting our family
fitness needs.

We simply take it too easy, we sleep and wake up late, having very little
or no time for working out and physical exercises. We indulge in very
excessive consumption of food and beverages which causes our fitness
level to deteriorate by the time the holidays are over which can be a
great setback to our overall family fitness and health. It is therefore
very important that we get back to a solid fitness routine after the
holidays to keep our families healthy and strong for the coming year.

Creating a family fitness plan need not be complicated or overwhelming.
What it really means is a new commitment to adding more activity to your
life. Here are a few tips to help your family get back to keeping fit after
the holidays.

Working out together as a family.
The easiest way of kick starting a new year’s fitness routine, is learning
to build new healthy habits in your family such as...

1. Make it a game - Create a deck of fitness exercise cards using standard
playing cards. Hearts stand for push ups, clubs for crunches, diamonds
for jumping jacks, and spades for squats. Let your child pick the card,
then do as many of the assigned activity as the card states. For example,
an ace of spades would be one squat and a six of hearts would be six
push ups.

2. Play Follow the Leader - taking turns leading the other through a series
of exercises (skipping, hopping, marching, etc.). Or take turns being the
“coach” and telling the “athlete” what to do.