Sports Then and Now

Fitness is something all your family members need or those that live in your household. It can help maintain a healthy life, and by putting your body through exercise, you’re potentially adding years to your life, rather than reducing them. For a lot of people though, incorporating fitness into your daily routine can be difficult when you begin to have more responsibilities in life. There are more things that demand our attention, and so it can be difficult to prioritize fitness. However, if you’re encouraging your household to do it, then it can make it easier when you’re doing it together. Here’s how to get your household involved in fitness.

Be A Role Model

When you’re trying to encourage someone to make better choices, like getting fit, it’s only going to be effective if you’re also making the changes necessary. Especially when it comes to your children, who look up to you on everything you do in life. Being a role model is important as a parent but also for other people, whether you live with friends or your partner. If you’re seen to be practicing what you preach, then others are likely to follow suit because you’re sticking to your word. If you’re just telling people to get fit but not doing it yourself, then it’s likely to fall on deaf ears, and that’s not what you want. So try being a role model by getting up and doing fitness. Lead by example because that’s one of the main ways you’re going to get your household to do exercise and to be motivated to work out in one way, shape or form.

Get A Passion For A Specific Sport

Having a passion for something can make the thing you’re doing feel like something that’s not as bad as it seems. When you have a passion for food, cooking a meal every night is something to enjoy. When you’ve got a passion for a specific sport or sports in general, it’ll hopefully motivate you to keep fit. Every time the Olympics take place, it often leads to a surge of young adults and children, taking gymnastics and other sport-orientated classes. It sparks a passion for sport and keeping fit, and so that’s exactly what you should be doing in order to encourage your household too. One way to do this is to find a sport you and your household love, this might be the NBA or it could be your local hockey team. Whatever the sport is, attending games and seeing the sport in the flesh will hopefully give you the passion you need to either do something similar or try out that sport for yourself. We’re easily influenced by those who inspire us, so look for that in either local sports, national or even international.

Find A Group Activity Everyone Likes   

When you’re trying to get the whole household involved with fitness, making sure everyone enjoys what they’re doing is important. Of course, everyone might have their individual sports or fitness classes that they go to, but it’s good to also have a group activity that everyone can get involved in. That might be a local 5K run with your community where everyone can take part or perhaps taking up a tennis court to play tennis together. There are a lot of group-friendly activities that can be done together, so it’s certainly worth taking a look at what’s available and having something where everyone gets together. Not only is it good for your fitness, but it’s also working on family or household relationships and helping to build that bond. Don’t just pick something that you enjoy as it has to be something for everyone’s enjoyment. Otherwise, you’re going to find people dropping out or kicking up a fuss about going each week.

Take Your Children To After-School Sports

After-school sports classes are essential, and in general, extra-curricular activities for children can be great for building up confidence and trying new things that they might just end up doing for a career later on in life.

If you’re a parent and you have children who are currently in school, then it’s important to get your children interested in these sports activities. It can be really beneficial for them to enjoy sport more and to have the motivation needed to be fit. A lot of children nowadays are growing up surrounded by technology and therefore spending most of their lives on their electronic devices. If anything, it’s now more important to encourage an active fitness life to combat the laziness that comes with social media and browsing the internet on a daily basis. Try and aim for at least one sports class a week and always try to make each and every one of them throughout the school year and outside during the school holidays if possible. It’ll help your children to hopefully find a love for sports and fitness as they reach adulthood.

Be Supportive At Any Sports Matches

When someone in your household is part of a team or fitness event where you can go along and watch, it’s important to show up at as many as possible. The reason for this is that it helps motivate that person to keep going and to work harder when they’re taking part in whatever event or match they’re competing in. So whether it’s a marathon that your partner is doing or a soccer match that your son is playing, try to make sure you’re going along as a moral support. It really does make a difference to their gameplay or how well they perform. As a family unit, it’s important to show your support for one another and even more so when you’re trying to encourage a healthy lifestyle. When times get busy, we can tend to drop our fitness attendance, and that’s something you don’t want to happen when it comes to your health. So go and show your support, whether it’s simply driving them to their matches or lifting banners of encouragement along the finish line of  a run. It all counts and matters for the person who is doing it.

Teach Them The Importance Of Health

Everyone can often benefit from a lesson or two about their health, and if you haven’t been teaching your children about it from the beginning, now’s the time to do it. There’s a lot more to looking after your health that not all school subjects will cover. So it’s up to you as a parent or as a partner, to encourage them and stress the importance of staying healthy.

They might not realize the impact that what they eat and drink has on their body, and even adults need a reminder of that too sometimes. Encouraging a healthier attitude to food and making sure that portion sizes are right within the family household is important to practice too. Get your children involved in the kitchen where you can by showing them how to cook and what a good portion of each food looks like for your household. By making them aware of the food they’re eating and attending doctor’s appointments and getting fit, it’s going to put them in good stead for when your children get older. They’ll certainly thank you for it later on in life when they see the benefits of it.

Try Walking More 

Walking is the cheapest form of exercise because it’s free and it’s worth changing a few things in order to boost up the number of steps you do per day. Set yourself up with your phone or on a pedometer to check how many steps you’re doing each day. Have a goal, and then slowly increase this as you go along. You’ll find that walking more steps each day or week is going to help your health improve, and it gets you out and about. Think about getting off public transport or walking to work where possible. Take the stairs instead of going in the lift or down an escalator where you’ll usually stand still. All these little changes can really help to get in that extra fitness each day.

Invest In A Home Gym Or Sports Equipment

Sports and home gym equipment can be a beneficial investment for your household if you’re all willing to use what you purchase. Consider what you’d want to buy first, and that would prove quite useful for everyone. Gym mats are good for floor-based workouts, a set of dumbbells are good for weight work and perhaps a skipping rope for cardio. There’s also plenty of outdoor games you can get like football nets and tennis equipment to play it out in your backyard

Getting your household into fitness might take a little time, but it’s so beneficial to change yours and others attitudes towards fitness. It’s a positive element of your life that’s only going to help reward you as you get older. So use these tips to help improve your household’s fitness and to work towards a healthier lifestyle in all.