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10 Family Exercise Tips
Breaking a Sweat with the Kids
By Stacy Tornio
It's 6:30 on a Friday night. You and your family just polished off a large pepperoni pizza and box of breadsticks. You're ready to relax – watch a movie, take a bath or anything to celebrate the end of another week. As your family begins to scatter in all different directions, you glance outside and realize the day is far from over. Amongst groans, you persuade everyone to go outside for a walk.
This is the scenario Barbara J. Moore would like to see more of. She is the president of Shape Up America!, a national initiative designed to promote healthy weight and physical activity in America. The organization publishes a booklet called 99 Tips for Family Fitness Fun. In it, Moore says exercising as a family is a central focus. "Walking is a perfectly acceptable physical activity," she says. "Strategies should be developed so that parents plan to go walking with their kids."
Moore says family walks are traditional across Europe, but it's not emphasized in the United States. "It's something we need to think about more because of the problem with obesity in children and certainly in adults as well," she says. Moore agrees families are often busier in today's society, but she says it shouldn't be used as an excuse not to exercise.
Barry Kipnes was a physical education teacher and basketball coach in Massachusetts for more than 30 years before he retired a few years ago. Over the years, Kipnes noticed a decline in the amount of time families spend together. He knew about the obesity epidemic in America among adults and children and thought there had to be away to address the two problems together. "I thought we could choose fitness and activity as a vehicle to bring families together," he says.
