7 Indoor & Outdoor Activities
For Staying Healthy During Social Distancing
If you usually head to the gym for your daily exercise, you might be a bit concerned about maintaining your family’s health during this period of social distancing.
Fortunately, staying active is really easy, regardless of the equipment you have available. Here are a few of your best options.
The Outdoor Essentials: Walk, Run, Bike
If you’re interested in staying healthy while enjoying the outdoors, you should start with the main outdoor essentials: walking, running, and bike riding.
The best part is that almost everyone in the family can participate, regardless of their athleticism or familiarity with exercise. Additionally, you can adjust these activities to be as challenging or leisurely as you desire.
For example, if you need a physical challenge, jump on your bike and hit a few hill sprints. If you’d instead prefer to take things slower, head out for a trail jog or a leisurely walk with the family through your local park. The possibilities are virtually endless.
Frisbee
Frisbee is a great way to spend family time while staying active. Best of all, you can choose how challenging your game is and even incorporate sprints if you want to sweat.
If you’re looking for a fun family challenge, play a game of ultimate frisbee:
- Head to an open field that’s about the size of a soccer or football field (smaller is ok, too) and make two goals with one on each end.
- Create two equal teams.
- The object is to “score” by catching the frisbee in the opponents’ goal.
Just remember, though, you can’t take steps when you have the frisbee, and if the disc touches the ground, it’s the other team’s turn. Longer throws are more productive, but much more challenging to run down and successfully catch!
Hiking
If you’re fortunate to live near Las Vegas’ beautiful hiking trails, there are few family-friendly ways to get exercise and enjoy the great outdoors.
Whether you’re into trail running or just looking to take in some views, going for a hike is one of your best options during this time away from traditional recreation.
Plus, most hikes with at least some incline will challenge your leg muscles as well as your cardio to help you all stay in shape. You can’t go wrong!
Indoor Fitness: LVAC and LVAC OnDemand
We look forward to each and every one of our members returning for a gym workout. We know you’ve missed training at LVAC, and we’ve missed you! We understand that it may not be possible for some, so LVAC has created LVAC OnDemand so you and your family can get a great workout in with just your body weight, or a few small pieces of equipment.
If you want a real challenge with your bodyweight, try prioritizing exercises like:
- Bodyweight squats
- Lunges
- Pushups
- Planks
- Bulgarian split squats
- Jumping jacks
- Sit-ups
For effective bodyweight workouts, my favorite method is to decide on a few exercises and then create a time goal for each, like 30 seconds of bodyweight squats.
Then, I repeat that process for each exercise until I’m ready to stop.
If you’re fortunate enough to have resistance bands, they’re also a good option for applying resistance to different bodyweight exercises like bicep curls, pushups, and even squats.
Also, consider gettting creative with household items to make workouts more challenging. Water-filled milk jugs make great dumbbells, and filled backpacks are a great way to simulate a weighted vest!
Games, Games, and More… Games!
We’re fortunate to live in a time when social isolation isn’t as challenging as it once was. That’s in part, due to games.
Whether you enjoy video games or board games, there are plenty of options to play individually or with the whole family, and there’s no better time to play than downtime.
Despite board and card games being the standard, there are options for everyone, even if you want to be active.
For instance, try games like “the floor is lava,” where you have to jump from one spot to the next without touching the ground in between. Not only is it a fun experience, but it’s also an excellent way to stay active when you’re locked indoors.
Final Thoughts
If you’re feeling a bit down because you can’t exercise, you’re not alone. Fortunately, though, there are many ways to stay active both indoors and outdoors.
Try using some of these suggestions or consider them inspiration for your own ideas to stay active!
