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Exercise With Kids 101: Mastering Fitness with Kids at Home

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Learn how to workout with your kids at home.

As a mom it can literally seem impossible to exercise with your kids at home! Learn handfuls of amazing ways to workout with baby or workout with toddler or even with your bigger kids.

These tips, tricks, and routines will give you all the mommy and me workouts you need to learn how to exercise at home with kids of any age!

Learn to stay in shape and exercise with baby in a carrier, do yoga with the kids, do Pilates workouts with baby, life changing HIIT routines, and way more!

learn tricks to exercise with baby and kids at homelearn tricks to exercise with baby and kids at home

Does it feel impossible to workout with your kids at home?

Exercise with kids may seem impossible but is actually so fun, and vital to your physical and mental health as a mommy. Plus you’ll be setting a wonderful example for those little ones.

By exercising at home you are teaching them healthy habits. You are making them more prone to get off devices and be more active. AND you are teaching them that moms self care is important. They already see you taking care of everybody else all the time. Now you can teach them that mommy taking care of herself is important too.

Not to mention exercise has tons of benefits!

  • It helps you to maintain a healthy weight. 
  • Exercise helps give you more energy.
  • It it helps you sleep better at night. 
  • Working out helps to relieve pain, even chronic pain.

But how can you even begin exercising at home with your kids without a free hand, let alone a free minute?

I’ll make it easy for you!  You may find yourself with yours kids all the time for any number of reasons.

  1. You may have a new baby and are searching for ways to learn to workout again with them in tow.
  2. Perhaps you home school and your kids are home all the time.
  3. Maybe you were thrust into schooling from home on the quarantine situation going on right now.

Whatever the reason learning to exercise with your kids around is essential for maintaining your health and fitness.

As a work-at-home homeschooling mama I have had my kids with me 24 hours a day, every day for years. I’m going to give you tons of resources so that no matter what type of workout you want to do OR how much time you have, you can rock learning how to exercise with kids at home too!

Side Note: IF the social distancing and Coronavirus quarantine has brought you here you will find these resources really helpful too!

 

Why Exercise is Important to Squeeze in at Home Even with Your Kids Around or a New Baby

It is so important to strengthen your body postpartum (whether newly postpartum or years ago) to help it repair and to stay strong for all the weight that you will be carrying from now on. From your baby, to the stroller, to all the groceries for your growing family, you will be carrying a ton of heavy stuff for years and you need strength to do that without injury!

Exercise even helps to keep all sorts of diseases at bay

  • It’s good for your heart
  • it’s great for your muscles
  • it benefits your respiratory system
  • it assists in managing mental disorders
  • it combats digestive issues
  • and it just overall makes you feel great! 

Exercise is a key component in leading a full and happy life.

And yet, so many times and for so many people it is not a priority.  Some people genuinely don’t think they like to exercise.  Others know all the amazing benefits it will bring them, but cannot manage to work it into their busy schedule. (Because every mom is busy every second I totally get it! It’s hard!)

But you need to stay active for your health and happiness, and I’m sure that I can help you to do it!

 

Lifesaving Tricks to Exercise with Kids of Any Age! 

If you are newly postpartum it is vitally important to work your way into exercising slowly to strengthen you body after almost every organ was displaced and either stretched or squished. Listen to your body and exercise only after receiving your doctors’ clearance.

Exercise will help strengthen everything that got stretched out and everything that is now getting overused. It literally feels impossible to exercise at home with a new baby. 

Great tips for exercising with baby. 

  1. Try all the mommy and me workouts listed below.
  2. Try babywearing workouts.
  3. Stroller workouts might be the key for you!
  4. Break your workouts into small increments. Exercising with baby in 2 10 minute blocks is just as effective as a 20 minute routine!

Exercising with a toddler at home is an artform. Toddlers are busy. They are often outspoken and all over the place. There are lots of tricks to exercising at home with a toddler that can be really helpful!

  1. Play music like their favorite YouTube songs in the background!
  2. Try dance party workouts.
  3. Try stroller workouts.
  4. Incorporate them as a weight!
  5. Make each move associated with an animal and make silly faces and noises.
  6. Bubbles. Never underestimate the power of bubbles.

You can even workout with big kids at home! Right now ALL the kids are at home as social distancing becomes mandatory for a COVID-19 quarantine. All kids of all ages are different.

Some might require very little encouragement and happily do a full workout with you! (I have one of those, and it is an awesome bonding time!) Other children might loathe exercising with mom and the art to doing it at home with them in tow might just be learning to keep them entertained. 

Either way here are some tips for getting in your workouts with big kids at home.

  1. Try doing special Youtube kids at home workouts with them.
  2. Circuit training is usually really great for older kids.
  3. Create challenges, who can plank longer? Bigger kids can be very goal oriented.
  4. Try going for runs together.
  5. Try acro yoga… it can be really fun for all!

 

 

Workouts to Do with Kids at Home by Age and Exercise Type

 

First Let’s Touch on PREGNANCY WORKOUTS

If you are currently pregnant (not with your first of course) you need to be even more careful with your workouts! There are lots of precautions that you must be aware of in order to workout safely during pregnancy.

However, it is vitally important to you and your unborn baby’s health that you do workout if possible! Learn everything you need to know about how to exercise while pregnant. Or learn how to exercise safely in the third trimester because that’s a whole different ballgame!

Great at Home Prenatal Workouts:

 

PILATES WITH YOUR KIDS OR BABY

Great Pilates routines don’t need to include any additional equipment other than your beautiful body.  It’s easy to do even while breastfeeding believe it or not!

Pilates is great for incorporating a few strengthening moves while playing on the floor with the littles.  It’s even easy to do with school aged kids by getting them involved.

 

YOGA WITH KIDS

Yoga is so wonderful for mind and body.  The benefits far exceed just getting fit.  You will learn to control your mind, your breathing, and develop wonderful postural awareness.  Yoga is very low impact and you can easily find routines for absolutely any level.

From the time my oldest was two she really enjoyed a YouTube channel called Cosmic Kids Yoga.  It’s a great way to get your children familiar and interested in yoga as each video is a guided routine to a kids story or movie.  If your totally new to yoga I recommend learning a sun salutation.

It really helps you learn some of the most basic and effective moves and also gets you comfortable with performing a yoga flow.  Which is the fluid-like shifting from one move into the next.  Beginning yoga is a great exercise to do with your children of any age which will greatly help you both.

Acro yoga poses are another fun challenge to do together!

 

BABY WEARING WORKOUTS

 

As a personal fitness trainer I used to design 45-60 minute routines for a class of mamas. It was geared at stroller and babywearing exercise classes.  If you set baby or bigger kid (as I do) in a stroller and/or wear your little one it can be a wonderful and beyond simple way to incorporate your littles into a fitness routine!

Babywearing workouts are one of my favorite ways to workout with baby.

Baby wearing exercise can be a bit tricky as not all moves can be used for babies safety and comfort.  Also, the extra weight on your front makes any exercise extra challenging.  But I absolutely love it and think it is completely necessary for baby wearing mothers to try out baby wearing exercise routines.

It gives you so much strength for that precious extra weight we choose to carry around all of the time.

Sometimes it can be hard on your back, arms, and even legs to carry little ones as much as we just have to!  If you keep those muscles strong by including regular exercise into your routine, carrying around that lovely little load becomes exponentially easier!

 

STROLLER EXERCISE

Strollers are made for using with a workout and running in my opinion.  And I’ll let you in on a little secret, you absolutely don’t need to spend the extra coin to get a fancy schmansy jogging stroller.  With baby #1 I used a regular stroller.  This time around I got a nice double jogger and then proceeded to switch back to just using a regular stroller.

I’m always on paved roads and it works just fine for running and it is much less maintenance as I don’t have to pump up the tires.  You can even use the stroller as a stabilizer when incorporating other moves besides running and use it as a bench to do some moves on!  Think mountain climbers, pushups, and tricep dips. 

Stroller exercie can be used to contain a baby, a toddler, and maybe even a bit bigger kid. Your big kids can run along or do circuit type exercises with you too! Stroller exercises can be great for exercising with almost any age kid!

 

HIIT WITH KIDS

Have you ever heard of HIIT routines?  It stands for high intensity interval training and I love them for exercising with kids at home.  You can get in as much calorie burning and even more of a metabolism booster in less time by using high intensity interval training.

Just perfect for a busy mom.

Your metabolism is boosted for up to 48 hours after completing a HIIT routine.  Seriously, two days! The intensity level you work at is so high that it causes excess post-exercise oxygen consumption to take place. 

What that means is that you are working at such a high threshold (for a super short amount of time I promise!) that it causes can oxygen deficit in your body.  Which it continues to recover from long after the workout and continues to burn calories as well as increase metabolism.

HIIT changes your body on a cellular level for 24 hours after completing a routine in an attempt to prepare for future HIIT bursts.  The best part of high intensity interval training is that it is super short.

You exercise in short bursts at 100% intensity, followed by a short rest period, followed by something different or a different level of intensity, followed by a short rest period, and so on.  Routines are usually about 10-20 minutes.  That’s it.

I love that when I even first start a new exercise at a level I don’t feel I can keep up long, I’m already almost done with it.  It makes it so much easier to push really really hard.  If you can keep your kiddos entertained for ten or twenty minutes you can get in a rockin’ workout!

AND it is a great way to involove kids because they have a lot of fun with most of the HIIT moves, though they shouldn’t do as long as intervals as mama.

 

DANCE EXERCISING WITH KIDS

Dance is an effective and very popular form of exercise.  I mean, who doesn’t love to dance?  Whether you have mad skills or your totally awkward, dancing is fun and freeing.  There are tons of popular classes and DVDs that have just exploded because even if you hate the gym, I bet you don’t hate to dance!

Zumba and Jazzercise are two super fun dance classes I’ve tried out and just had a blast.  Jazzercise came so perfectly to me, in Zumba I was totally awkward but rocked it as best I could and had a great time anyways. 

What’s great about dance being a phenomenal form of exercise is that kids of all ages love to dance to!  So rock out to kid tunes!  Have an epic dance party with your kids! It might just be the most fun way to workout with kids of absolutely any age!

Just crank up the tunes and move it for a great workout! But for some additional fun ideas:

 

More Amazing Eclectic Workout with Kids at Home Routines and Ideas

 

Exercising with kids at home is totally possible, you can do it!

I absolutely love to exercise, if you gave me free time that’s what I’d do. It’s my favorite “me time” activity but I equally love teaching it to my children.  To feel like I’m setting a good and healthy example for them every day.

I get to show them that I care about me and I care about them.  Teaching them from a young age how to have a blast getting off the couch, putting down the tablet, and getting outside for some exhausting fun.

That’s why I am so excited to have gotten to share so many different ideas of how to exercise at home with your kids to you! I hope you can now learn to carve out the time because you deserve it and you matter mama!

Your health and happiness matter and when you are feeling completely overwhelmed with the kids being at their beck and call 24 ours a day, you can learn to incorporate them into 20 minutes of exercise for you and for them! Eventually they will accept it as part of their daily norm.

I’d love to know which types of exercise you’d love to learn more about how to complete with the littles!  I’d be more than happy to make routines and posts for your inspiration.

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8 Comments

  1. These are great ways to exercise with kids, you surely put an end to the excuse “I cant because of my children” I think that with weight being an issue in our country today that including children in the exercise and making it fun will help set them on the path to a healthy future that always includes exercise. Thank you for sharing this wonderful post in the All for Mamas Link Party Week 11 #allformamas Please remember to finish the link party steps by adding the #allformamas badge to your blog post or page so that you can be considered for the next featured post and also so I can share this post on the Facebook Group page #All For Mamas Link Party on my page, Blended Life Happy Wife, Twitter, Pinterest and Google+ thank you so much for being a part of the link party

    1. I’m glad you like the idea of incorporating the kids into exercise Stephanie! I’m going to try to get those buttons on right now!

  2. I find the kids are excited about joining me in exercise. One of the things we do most (out of convenience) is walking. The two older kids normally ride their bikes and I have one of the younger ones in the pram and wear the other one. I find this clears my mind as well because they’re all occupied, quiet and calm and I can think through anything that may have been bothering me. We’ve also been getting into the Cosmic Kid Yoga – how awesome is that channel!!!! It’s used at my sons school and that’s how we came across it.

    1. Your walks sound amazing Kristy. So glad find the time to get the kids outside AND are able to clear your mind at the same time. Sounds like you really have your hands full!

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