Kids Fitness: Winter Workouts for Kids, Part 2

Old school kids fitness: The snowball fight

This is part 2 of Kids Fitness: Winter Workouts for Kids. With today’s sedentary, electronic lifestyles, getting kids moving and active can be a challenge at the best of times. In the Canadian winter, prying kids away from their video games is…more difficult yet critical to their fitness today and setting them up for a lifetime of year-round physical activity. Here are five activities that will get you and your kids moving and having fun when the snow is flying.

1. Parent/kid fitness class—Let’s face it, running isn’t much fun. I started when I was 16. Two chronic running injuries (plantar fasciitis on the left and IT band syndrome on the right) and a ruptured disc in my neck later, and I can’t run on regular basis anymore. But I can run once a week in a parent/kid running course at our local recreation centre (the Westside Recreation Centre in Calgary). Mack says he doesn’t like it, but when the class ends and you ask him if he’d like to sign up for the next class he always says yes.
2. Snowshoeing—You don’t have to drive out to the mountains to have fun snowshoeing for a couple hours. Any urban park with snow will do. You don’t even need enough snow to need snowshoes. There’s something about having snowshoes on their feet that makes kids find ways to have fun. They’ll run around, explore places they’d otherwise walk past, and have a blast.
3. Walking to school—It doesn't get any more old school than this, and there’s nothing like walking to build your aerobic fitness. When Mack started grade seven, he wasn’t allowed to take the school bus anymore. Now he and Michael (grade three) walk to and from school, which is 10 or 15 minutes one way. Michael actually prefers walking to taking the bus. Go figure.
4. Snowball fights—Talk about fun. Yet how often do you see kids outside pelting each other with snowballs? Pick teams and home bases, or declare every man for himself, and let the battle commence.
5. Wii—Yes, a video game. But leave Lego Star Wars and Mario Kart on the shelf. Games like Active Life Explorer and Just Dance 4 are fun, get you're heart rate up, and give you a full serving of aerobic exercise in every session. Like swimming in Kids Fitness: Winter Workouts for Kids, Part 1, these games are excellent alternatives when it's just too cold to go out.