As a parent (particularly if you’re an active person yourself), you may be wondering whether it’s a good idea to push your kids to work out as well.
In short, it is absolutely a good idea to encourage your children to be active and to exercise frequently. However, you should approach this a little differently than if you were advising a workout plan for an adult.
Read on and we’ll explain everything you need to know.
Is it Good for Kids to Exercise?
Exercise is essential for anyone, but particularly important for children.
An active lifestyle, including regular, structured exercise, creates a great foundation for your child’s health and fitness, instills good habits that they will likely carry over to their adult life, and delivers a number of very important benefits, such as:
- A healthy weight (less likely for your kid to be overweight or underweight).
- Lower risk of obesity and diabetes.
- Good cardiovascular health.
- Lower blood pressure and blood cholesterol.
- Stronger muscles and bones.
- Better sleep.
- Better mood.
- Improved cognitive function and development.
Exercise can also teach your child consistency, how to handle adversity and challenges, and social skills.
Building this habit early is essential, when these habits are more likely to become deeply ingrained and stick with them throughout their life.
At What Age Can Kids Start Exercising?
Children can, and should, start exercising basically as soon as they are able to run and walk.
In their early years (up to and including preschool), this won’t be highly structured exercise. You should encourage unstructured active time for toddlers and preschoolers, if they aren’t already doing this.
The goal is not so much to get them to play a sport or do any specific activities at this point, but mainly to ensure they maintain good activity levels and don’t fall into a sedentary lifestyle from an early age.
From around age five onwards, you might begin encouraging more structured activities, however it’s still essential that these activities are age-appropriate, safe, and enjoyable for your kids.
Should Kids Lift Weights?
Strength training can actually be very beneficial for children. This can include weight training, but should be treated differently to how an adult would lift weights.
Weight training is a great way to develop healthy and strong muscles, bones, joints and nervous system function from an early age. However there are more risks with strength training than in most sports, cardiovascular activities and unstructured active time.
Your child’s bones, joints and connective tissues are not fully developed yet, leaving them at a big risk of injury if they try to lift too much.
Any strength training for kids should be done with very light weights – no more than 10% of their body weight. Bodyweight movements, such as squats, jumps and pullups are also great age-appropriate activities.
It’s also advisable to focus on activities that your child enjoys doing. Most kids don’t have the attention span to stay focused through four sets of 12 reps of each exercise. As well as keeping them safe, you need to keep them stimulated and interested, which means more functional activities involving running, jumping and climbing may be better than pure, structured weight lifting.
What Sports Are Best for Kids?
Sports are probably the best way to get your kids active and regularly exercising. Sports are more fun and engaging for kids, and have additional benefits such as building social skills, coordination and mental resilience.
So what kind of sports are best for your kids? First, it should be something the child enjoys. You want it to be something that stimulates and excites them, so there’s more of a chance they’ll stick with it.
It should also be safe. As we said previously in regards to lifting weights, kids may be more susceptible to injury if you put their bodies under intense stress at a young age.
Just about any sport can work, assuming your child enjoys it and that it’s structured in a safe way for kids. This can include team sports such as basketball, baseball and soccer, or individual sports such as tennis, swimming, gymnastics, martial arts and track.
What Types of Exercises Should Kids Avoid?
As mentioned before, it’s just important that what your child does to exercise is safe. A little rough and tumble is ok, but you want to avoid your kid getting hurt.
Specifically, you want to avoid anything with the risk of head trauma, as this can interfere with the child’s cognitive development.
Instead of avoiding certain exercises or sports, they should be altered to be age-appropriate. Here are some examples of how to make different activities child-safe:
- Strength training: stick to very low weights and controlled movements.
- Football and other contact sports: switch to non-contact variants such as flag football or touch rugby.
- Martial arts: focus on movements and body control, not sparring.
What if My Kid Doesn’t Want to Exercise?
With all the distractions and cheap dopamine around today, it can be harder to encourage kids to get up and be active.
Here are some ideas to help:
- Have your child experiment with different activities to find the type of exercise that they enjoy the most.
- Set a regular schedule for physical activity.
- Put them in social activities such as organized sports, where they get to make friends while being active.
- Be a role model and set an example by living an active lifestyle yourself.
- Do physical activities together with your children.
- Make sure you keep it fun and avoid putting too much pressure on your kids.
5 Simplest Exercises for Kids to Get Started
There’s no shortage of ways for a kid to be active and exercise. But if you’re looking for some starter exercises to start turning unstructured active time into structured exercise, here are five simple ideas:
- Jump rope: fun and engaging full-body workout.
- Jungle gym: stimulating activity that builds strength and mobility.
- Swimming: fun, safe on the body, and also an important skill for your kids to learn.
- Dancing: another fun way to be active, builds coordination and flexibility.
- Martial arts: social, also builds characteristics like confidence, respect and self-esteem.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter too much what your kid does to be active. As long as it’s safe, do what you can to encourage them to get up off the sofa and start building healthy habits that will set them up for a long and healthy life.