Keeping your Kids Active During the Quarantine

We are in uncharted territory as we navigate through the nationwide-quarantine to minimize the effect of the COVID-19 virus. During this time, events and large gathering are rightfully cancelled in order to minimize the spread of the virus. This video shared on social media is probably the best visualization I’ve seen so far about the significance of social distancing.

It is important to maintain your “usual” schedule as much as possible, especially when you have kiddos at home. With parents working from home too, it will be easy to let your kids be sedentary as you focus to get your own stuff done (guilty!). But it is important to keep you and your kids physically active during the quarantine. Here are some creative and fun ways to keep moving at home:

1.) Dance, Dance, Dance

There is nothing more fun than turning on your favorite up-beat tunes and dancing to it. You can be as unorganized as you want with it, just letting your body go to the rhythm of the beat, or you can do something more organized. Dust off the old Xbox Kinect and pop in games like Just Dance and Dance Central. If you don’t have an Xbox Kinect, you can find hundreds of songs from the Just Dance games on YouTube; you won’t get scoring for it, but they provide organized choreography to follow. Organized choreography can be great for your kids as it can help them learn to move in rhythm with different parts of their body (right, left, arms, legs, etc). Have a favorite dance routine you’ve always wanted to learn? You can find Zumba and other dance routine tutorials on YouTube that you can follow. Maybe you and your family can learn several dances and have a virtual dance recital with family members through FaceTime at the end of the quarantine! Maybe post your routine on TikTok to increase your coolness rating with your kids and their friends!

Needless to say, this scored me some major “cool dad” points with my daughters and their friends.

2.) Alphabet Movement

Something I use at RISE occasionally with kids is an alphabet warm-up. I have a chart listed here where each letter in the alphabet represents a specific movement pattern and/or exercise. I have kids write their first name, or last name, or favorite food, or favorite sports team and each letter in their answer is matched up with the exercise listed on the list. Think of anything that your child has to answer and match it up with the exercises. Feel free to add and modify this to make it work for you!

3.) Calendar Challenges

I call these calendar challenges and it was introduced to me by good friend and former colleague at Concordia University, track coach Jerret Mantalas. You take the current day of the month, so today is the 16th. Pick 1 exercise and you will perform repetitions throughout the day to add up to the current day of the month. So two examples that Jerret and I used to do: take the day of the month and that’s how many minutes you have to hold a front plank during the day. So for today: 16 minutes of front planks spread out throughout the morning and night. Instead of holding it for 16 minutes straight, do 1 minute of planks here, 1.5 minutes of planks there, until it adds up to 16 minutes from the time you wake up, to when you go to sleep. Another challenge is with push-ups: we took the day of the month and multiplied it by 10, so today would be 160 reps. That’s how many push-ups we would do during the day, again, 10 push-ups here, 10 there, until it added up to 160 total repetitions. You can do regular push-up, feet elevated, hands on a chair, any variation of a push-up. This same challenge can be done with body weight squats too. I love this challenge because it teaches you how little efforts spread out through the day can add up to big numbers at the end! Tomorrow, the number would be 17 minutes or 170 reps, the next would be 18 minutes or 180 reps, etc. Don’t feel like you have to multiply the day by 10; multiply by 2 or 5, totally up to you.

4.) Deck of Cards Workout

All you need here is simply a 52-card deck of playing cards. Designate each suite an exercise, like push-ups for hearts, body weight squats for spades, jumping jacks for clubs, and mountain climbers for diamonds. Draw one card at a time and the number on the card is how many repetitions you’ll do of the suite. So if you draw an 8 of clubs, you’ll do 8 jumping jacks. Ace is equal to 1 repetition, all the way up to a king equaling 13 repetitions. Challenge yourself to go through all 52 cards without stopping! Make it more interesting by timing yourself and getting through the entire deck as fast as you can, then beating your times as each day passes!

5.) Play Outside

Enjoy the weather and go outside! It can be structured like simulating your sporting practice, free play at a playground for your kids, a casual bike ride, or going for a walk/hike somewhere. It’s spring time and weather is starting to be consistently nicer so take advantage of the fresh air and vitamin D!

6.) Add Movement to a Movie or Show

It’s inevitable during this break that your kids are going to be watching movies or TV shows. Add some movement and spice to the viewing party. Add an exercise, like 15 body weight squats whenever something happens or something is said during the movie. For example, in a Disney movie, everyone will do 15 body weight squats whenever there’s a kiss, or when magic is used, or when a song starts (better yet, hold a front plank during any song that’s sung), or when someone says “princess” or “love.” Mix-up the exercises and the number of repetitions to be done!

7.) At Home Strength Training

I’ve mentioned it before in blogs and on my website how important strength training is for all ages. Strength training at home is absolutely do-able, even if you don’t have a full gym set-up at home. All you need is a backpack, some books, some canned goods, a bench/chair/couch, and some stairs. Check out this video I put together with my daughters with some strength training workouts you can do at home.

Resistance: find jugs of milk or juice, canned goods, fill a backpack or duffel bag with books and canned goods. Maybe even (safely) pick up a sibling!

Hugging Split Squats: hug a weighted bag at your chest.

Split Jumps: jump as high as you can and scissor your feet in mid-air.

Elevated Push-Ups: use a bench, couch, chair to bring your hands off the ground, which makes it easier to do the push-up correctly!

Rows: use a milk jug or canned goods as a weight. Keep that back flat and don’t let it twist.

Deadlifts: use a weighted bag as your resistance. Keep your back straight and push your hips BACK, not down.

Stair Hops and Runs: jump and run up stairs in a variety of ways, as fast you can!

You can organize it as a circuit, doing 15-20 reps of each exercise, moving from one exercise to the next, and repeating that circuit 3-5 times. Or, you can sent a timer and do as many repetitions of one exercise in a given time, like 30 seconds, rest for 30 seconds, then move on to the next exercise for 30 seconds, and so forth. Repeat that timed interval of work/rest 3-5 times. Be creative in how you add resistance to your lifts!

Conclusion

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to continually being active during this break. All it takes is some effort and creativity to make movement fun. Please plan exercise and basic strength training into your kids’ quarantined schedule. Keep an eye out for other movement-based ideas on social media @rise_lab_pdx throughout the break!