Kids and Fitness

By starting fitness and exercise early on in life, we lay a base of healthy practices and smart choices. As a parent, you are a role model to your children and showing your kids that fitness is a priority teaches them healthy habits for their lifetime. Whether it be signing them up for sports at their school or a camp (or a 2C1S class!), encouraging them to get outside and run around, or doing exercise together, the benefits are endless when it comes to kids being involved with fitness. 

On top of being a great stress reliever, working out regularly helps to strengthen your heart, lungs, and bones. The heart is a muscle, and just like a bicep or quad it must be regularly exercised in order to maintain its strength. Picture someone who doesn’t ever work out: think about their bicep next to your favorite football player’s bicep. Which do you think is stronger? And if that was your heart? Keeping our hearts strong and healthy facilitates good blood flow and helps prevent heart disease later in life.

Working out also promotes increased lung capacity over time, drawing in more oxygen and expelling more carbon dioxide and other waste gases with each breath. Having strong lungs is a huge part of a healthy body, so by starting regular exercise at a younger age, we have a much better shot at a lifetime of peak health.

And importantly, exercise strengthens our bones, which is especially pertinent to our future selves—as we age our bones lose density, becoming more prone to injury. By getting in lots of exercise while we are young, we can strengthen our bones, allowing them to support our bodies and daily activities.

All these things might be important to parents, but I doubt your 5-year-old cares very much about their bone density levels. The things that pull kids into fitness is the fun they have and the time they get to spend with you. When they exercise, they release stress that they might not even realize or understand they have. It’s a great way to deal with all that energy and put it towards something good—you might even feel energized just working out with them! Teaching healthy habits is so necessary, especially in our fast-paced and processed lives and by showing your children that you care about your health and theirs, you are setting the example of making good choices, self-care, and having fun while doing it.