Exercise and Fitness for Kids,Fun fitness activities to keep kids healthy and Fit!

Exercise for Children

Like adults, kids need exercise. Most children need at least an hour of physical activity every day. Regular exercise helps children

• Feel less stressed
• Feel better about themselves
• Feel more ready to learn in school
• Keep a healthy weight
• Build and keep healthy bones, muscles and joints
• Sleep better at night

As kids spend more time watching TV, they spend less time running and playing. Parents should limit TV, video game and computer time. Parents can set a good example by being active themselves. Exercising together can be fun for everyone. Competitive sports can help kids stay fit. Walking or biking to school, dancing, bowling and yoga are some other ways for kids to get exercise. An increasing number of children are obese, and if no intervention is made, 80% of them will stay overweight as adults. This can put them at risk for many medical problems, including diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and sleep apnea. Obesity can also adversely affect their self-esteem. An important way to help your child with weight loss, maintaining a normal weight and develop healthy habits is to encourage him to participate in regular physical activity. This can include participating in a physical education class in school or extracurricular sports at school or in the community.

Warming Up

To prevent injury, it is important for your child to warm up before exercising. This should include about five minutes of light activity, such as walking, calisthenics (jumping jacks, bending, knee lifts), and stretching.

Exercising

After warming up, your child should perform fifteen to forty minutes of a regular exercise each day. This can include fast walking, jogging, biking, roller blading, running, swimming, jumping rope or group activities, such as playing soccer, hockey, volleyball, baseball, basketball, or football.

You should also encourage regular physical activity as part of your child’s regular daily routine. This can include:

• Walking or riding your bike instead of driving for short distances.
• Taking a walk with a friend or walk the family dog each afternoon.
• Using stairs instead of escalators or elevators, especially if you have to walk out of your way to find the stairs.
• Parking your car at the end of the parking lot and walking to the entrance of the mall or grocery store.
• Chores, such as doing yardwork or housework.
• Family exercise: go for routine family walks or bike rides in the neighborhood or local park

Cooling Down

To prevent injury, it is also important for your child to cool dcalisthenics (jumping jacks, bending, knee lifts), and stretching.

The Importance own after exercising. Like the warm up, this should include about five minutes of light activity, such as walking, of Getting Kids to Be Active

Everyone knows that kids should be physically active and need to exercise regularly to be physically fit.

Whether they are overweight or at a healthy weight, regular physical activity is considered by most experts to be an essential part of a healthy lifestyle.

When most adults think about exercise, they imagine working out in the gym on a treadmill or lifting weights.

But for kids, exercise means playing and being physically active. Kids exercise when they have gym class at school, soccer practice, or dance class. They’re also exercising when they’re at recess, riding bikes, or playing tag.

Fun fitness activities to keep kids healthy and Fit!

The lifestyles of today’s youth have undergone enormous change. Television, computers and video games have replaced many of the physical activities children once enjoyed. So when we discuss our children, we often hear words like ‘obesity’, ‘heart disease’, ‘high blood pressure’ and ‘diabetes’.

Fitness seems to have taken a backseat when it comes to the modern child. Our kids are becoming victims of inactive, unmotivated, unhealthy lifestyles and their health is deteriorating.

Benefits of Exercise

Everyone can benefit from regular exercise. Kids who are active will:

• have stronger muscles and bones
• have a leaner body because exercise helps control body fat
• be less likely to become overweight
• decrease the risk of developing type 2 diabetes
• possibly lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol levels
• have a better outlook on life

Besides enjoying the health benefits of regular exercise, kids who are physically fit sleep better and are better able to handle physical and emotional challenges — from running to catch a bus to studying for a test.

The Three Elements of Fitness

If you’ve ever watched kids on a playground, you’ve seen the three elements of fitness in action when they:

1. run away from the kid who’s “it” (endurance)
2. cross the monkey bars (strength)
3. bend down to tie their shoes (flexibility

Aerobic exercise can be fun for both adults and kids. Examples of aerobic activities include:

• basketball
• bicycling
• ice-skating
• inline skating
• soccer
• swimming
• tennis
• walking
• jogging
• running

 Exercise Equals Fun

Getting America’s children to exercise has never been more difficult as the new boob-tube generation slouches in front of TVs, or sits for hours, mesmerized behind shoot-out video and computer games.

However, it is possible to foster a regular exercise pattern for children from an early age, with simple activities that are more “fun” than “exercise.

The regular interval in jumping rope pumps the heart steadily, and is an efficient form of aerobic exercise.

Biking
Biking is another excellent way to get a child to exercise. From first learning on a tricycle to the celebrated arrival of the two-wheeler, biking is something that can be viewed as an achievement, as well as an easy way to increase a child’s physical activity. Biking helps children develop coordination, balance, work the back muscle groups that aid good posture, and build up leg muscles. Moreover, biking gives children an easy way to travel to their friends’ houses and assert independence–an added incentive that will get those legs, and lungs, pumping! As nine-year old Michelle Yuen says, “I love riding my bike. It’s so much fun. I ask my mom, and then I can bike down to my friend’s house.”

Rollerblading
Bikes aren’t the only wheels that kids can use to rev up their heart rate. Rollerblading is an activity that can be done indoors, and out, and an activity the whole family can join in. Whether in an indoor skating rink, or just playing by the sidewalk, rollerblading is an activity that is fun for the children and healthy as well.

A Walk with Fido
Another exercise that can be performed daily by a child is none other than the traditional walk with the dog. Jogging, or even walking at a brisk pace, with the dog, floods the body with endorphins and a slew of other health benefits related to exercise. Bring along a stick to throw to Fido, and the workout has becomes even more intense. What’s more: walking the dog everyday is a sure-fire way to maintain regular exercise, which is much more advantageous, in the long run, than intermittent exercising.

Yoga for Kids
Yoga has taken America by storm in recent years. From celebrity yogis like Madonna to stay-at-home moms, yoga has proven to be a way to tone and “center” the mind and body. Yoga is beginning to creep into the school gym programs, too. Just as many high schools throughout the nation have begun offering yoga as a gym option, many “yoga for kids” programs have sprung up as well. Yoga aims to tone the muscle groups, aid coordination, and improve flexibility through stretching. In addition, it has been said that a key principle in yoga, correct breathing, seems to alleviate stress in children.

Exercise that isn’t Exercise
Taking the non-traditionalist approach to exercising is just as easy. Children can help mom carry the groceries or walk with her to the drugstore. Whatever the case, mixing up a regular exercise pattern for kids helps them create a healthy lifestyle.