How to Establish Healthy Habits: Three Kid Friendly At Home Exercises to do as a Family

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Last Updated on April 24, 2024 by The Smetz Files

Disclaimer: You should always consult your medical professional before working out.

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My blog, The Smetz Files, is filled with my simple musings as a small town mom. Most of my posts center around our family time cheering on our two little athletes at their various sporting endeavors. Yeah, Sports Moms! 🙂

While my two kids are still relatively young and in the exploration stage of youth sports, training and conditioning are becoming more important to their success as developing athletes.

Expectations for training and strength have increased and gotten more involved in their respective sports. While we want to follow what’s best for their bodies and development, it’s also important for us to model healthy exercise habits as their parents.

So, here are three ways we’re working together as a family to support one another in establishing and maintaining healthy fitness habits.

Jogging

This is a relatively easy one and yet, my least favorite! The kids joined the running club at school, so they stay after one day a week training with their peers for a local 5K race later in the spring.

Part of our family workout routine includes jogging our neighborhood and the trails around our development. The kids do a quick jog to start their conditioning and especially on recovery days after pitching to support their arm health.

We’ve started small and are working our way up in terms of endurance. Lace up your favorite sneakers and hit the road!

Find some of my favorite sneaker options listed in the Sports Mom section!

Strength

Recently I’ve been more intentional about prioritizing my own strength training. The kids have taken an interest in getting stronger as well. They see the importance of a strong core and strong legs to support their goals both pitching and catching.

My two kids aren’t doing weights yet, but to work on increasing their strength they do a combination of the following:

• Push ups
• Sit ups
• Mountain climbers
• Plank
• Squats
• Burpees

In combination to get stronger and to protect their arms for pitching and throwing they do some basic work with resistance bands, a fitness stick, and medicine balls.

Speed & Agility

There’s a competitive gene running through our family, so we have a little fun with our speed and agility work! There’s usually some friendly competition when we break out the ladder to work on quick feet drills.

We’ve played around with fun variations of staying on your toes, moving quickly, and maintaining balance with different passes up and down. The kids are pretty inventive and have enjoyed searching up different ladder drills online.

We’ve incorporated some of these for their off days, when they aren’t practicing with their team or playing games. It’s been fun for the four of us to get in some exercise together.

Baseball & Softball

While my kids play multiple sports, they tend to focus much of their training and extra efforts on developing their baseball and softball skills. As such, we’ve invested in some at home equipment to keep up with their skillset. [Our dream is to build a baseball field with a batting cage…but we have to buy land first!]

Here are few things we keep handy in the garage for them to get in some extra reps:

• Power Net
• Softballs
• Baseballs
• Tennis balls or Pickle balls
• Softhands
• Exercise mat

Let’s wrap things up with some tools for recovery (this might be for us parents!). Maybe it’s just me, but after a really good workout, a massage gun is a nice way to keep my muscles loose. And we have ice packs for various soreness and the occasional bumps or bruises that accompany playing sports.

As active kids who love to be outside, they are constantly shooting hoops in the driveway, playing catch, or kicking a soccer ball around the front yard. These are just some intentional ways we try to stay active as a family and nurture their athletic goals.

How do you and your family stay active?