Get active

You've bought your kids toboggans, hockey sticks, and cross-country skis.

You've signed them up for indoor soccer, swimming lessons, and gymnastics classes.

You've told them all about the benefits of physical fitness. In fact, you've done everything possible to encourage your kids to put down the TV remote and get physically active. Or have you?

The benefits of being physically active and showing them that fitness is a priority in your own life. If you're not physically active yourself, your words are likely to lose their impact.

Getting started

You don't have to sign your kids up for boot camp in order to do your parental duty, however. In fact, that's one sure way to doom your family fitness program to failure A far better approach is to come up with a list of different fitness activities that your family could enjoy together and to find ways to work fitness into your schedules on a regular basis.

Make it fun.

As with anything else in life, variety is the key to making your family fitness program enjoyable.

Go for a walk indoors.

Don't skip your walk just because the weather's bad outside. Take your family fitness program indoors! You can either walk around your local mall or head for some spot that's a little more inspiring: Even strolling through a museum can be a fitness activity


What makes for an ideal family fitness activity?

An activity that will appeal to children and adults: Swimming, cross-country skiing, walking & biking are activities that appeal to both young and old. They're a better bet than activities that are more suited to members of one age group, but not the other. Remember, the name of the game is to choose an activity that each member of the family can enjoy together, regardless of age, fitness level.

An activity that's convenient to do: The easier you make it for everyone to exercise,the more likely you are to make the effort. It's one thing to get a family membership at the swimming pool down the street; it's quite another to purchase one at the pool across town.