Our recent generations are experiencing and practicing sedentary lifestyles like never before. With the ever-growing popularity of video games, cell phones, tablets, office jobs, and more, children and adults alike are living lives void of physical activity, leading to serious health issues, such as obesity, high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, and even cancer.

Finding ways to keep the whole family active together is becoming increasingly important. Not only can family fitness activities get the whole family moving and burning calories, but it is a time in which great family bonding can happen, because you are all directly interacting, competing, and working with one another to complete something, as opposed to inactively watching television together.
Playground fitness is a great way to create jungle gym courses for the family to complete. Try climbing the stairs as fast as you can and taking the slide down and repeating that process five times, and make a race out of it! Also try having races across the monkey bars, or sprints across the play areas.

Dancing is another great way to get everyone moving. Kids love music, and are always looking for an opportunity to show off their moves to you; so turn on some tunes and dance in the living room together for 30 minutes! Try different full body dances, such as jumping and squatting and wiggling that will burn the most calories.

Making fitness fun for the kids is the best way to get them exercising without them knowing it! Doing some of these activities for just 30 minutes a day can get everyone burning up to 500 calories each! That is as easy as replacing one television show with physical activity. When it is put in this perspective, there is really no excuse for getting everyone up and moving, having fun, laughing, and creating memories together while creating an active lifestyle that will stick with your children for the rest of their lives.

Sources: Parade