Father's Day Fitness

The role that a Father plays in every child’s life is important. My father was active with me. I’m not saying that he wanted to be all the time, but he was active. There are many things that parents can do with their children to include physical activity. With the increasing rate of overweight children, maybe we need to take a look at how we lead our lives and how we can sneak activity in on our children.

As I think back about the things I used to do as a child, a parent might know it’s exercise, but to a child it’s just play. With my father, the things I remember most, that were active, are:

Making and raking piles of leaves together so you could run and jump in them. The activity is you are running, jumping, judging distance, and all without knowing, it is exercise.

Basketball. We have a basketball goal attached to our garage outside of our house. Many times my brothers would be playing, but there were many games of horse, pig, and other made up names, it was exercise.

Running. Now I always liked to go out for a jog every now and then but it wasn’t always welcome that I jog alone. I remember one particular night when mom made this awesome soup (she makes the best soup) and I wanted to go for a jog after. By that, my father was obligated to go if he didn’t want me to go alone. You could actually hear the soup sloshing around in his stomach as we ran. We ended that one short, it was exercise.

Trails. The place where my father works used to have an outdoor trail. You know the kind where you run, do pull ups, push ups, and other physical tasks. Sometimes when he would go to work I would spend, what I thought was hours at the time, playing on the trail, it was exercise.

Baseball. Played baseball as a kid…I mean real baseball not the softball for girls thing. My father would throw the ball so I could practice batting and catching. It’s a surprise he didn’t damage his rotator cuff with three other boys in the family as well. It was exercise.

Caterpillars, pogo sticks, rocking horses on springs. You may not remember some of the names but I loved all three of those things. I would ride this “horse on springs” until my face was red, it was exercise.

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