Exercise you can do anywhere!

According to a survey recently done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, children between the ages of 8 and 18 spend up to 53 hours in front of a screen per week using different electronics or just over 7 hours per day! This limits the amount of time a child has available to exercise and decreases the likelihood of them doing it. The most used excuse for not exercising is time (which is wasted in front of a screen for the most part), but right behind that is the environment or equipment they have to do so. Some families are lucky enough to be able to enroll their children in sports, have a safe neighborhood for their kids to run around outside or even a pool and trampoline in their back yard to play with. Other families are not so fortunate and as mentioned previously are limited by the location with which they live or the equipment which they can buy. That does not mean that exercise and activities still cannot be accomplished however. There are many activities and exercises that can be done in a small open area inside the house. A couple examples for indoor activities might include: a mini obstacle course using furniture, dancing, cleaning (parents enjoy this one), jumping rope, yoga, acting like animals, hopscotch, building forts, pillow fights (safely) or even creating a body weight circuit exercise where no equipment is necessary. A couple example exercises are pushups, sit-ups, squats, shoulder circles, lunges, planks, leg raises, wall sits, frog jumps, jumping jacks, running in place and those are just a few. Put on some music inside and get moving! No matter what type of equipment, space, or activities a family has at their disposal, exercise can be done and should be done for a minimum of 60 minutes per day.