What should we be doing?

No matter what age you are, you should ideally vary the activities you do as there are different benefits connected to different forms of exercise:

Flexibility & mobility

To keep your body supple and flexible, giving you a greater range of movement.

Endurance (also referred to as ‘aerobic’ or cardiovascular’)

To improve the health of your heart and circulation, whilst also burning calories to help maintain your weight.

Strength

To strengthen your bones and muscles, giving you better posture, balance and bone strength.

Take a look at our Activity Index to see which activities are linked to each exercise type.

Keeping it more simple, here are a few ideas for how you can easily get active together:

• Put some music on and have a dance around the living room
• Encourage your child to be as independent as possible around the house e.g. tidy up after themselves and make their own bed
• Walk with your child to the local shops or post-box
• Try an exercise video and turn your living room into an aerobics studio!
• Encourage your child to help out around the house with chores that involve being active e.g. mowing the lawn, washing the car, cleaning the windows
• Make it a family tradition to go for a walk after dinner once a week
• Set ‘rules’ to limit the amount of time your child can spend watching television and playing on the computer
• Spend time playing active games with your child around the house and garden e.g. hide and seek, hopscotch or skipping