How do we get our kids to exercise?

In our character lesson this week, we are talking about our health and exercise.

How do I get my kids to exercise?

Exercise is an important thing to talk about now with our health. We’re coming into Thanksgiving, and we’re coming into the holiday season.

A lot of us are going to be spending a lot of time celebrating and eating plenty of things. It’s a fun time of the year for that. But we don’t want to forget about keeping our bodies healthy through exercise and moving.

One of the things exercise does is it helps keep our immune system strong. Exercise also keeps our energy high. It keeps us able to learn and able to think.

Exercise also allows us to eat plenty at thanksgiving dinner — but we have to move after that. You need to do some moving.

Exercise is important.

You have to get sweating. You have to get moving. You can’t spend all day sitting in front of a screen, right? You have got to use that body. When you do, you are healthy — and you’re ready to take on life.

A couple of important parts of exercise are endurance, strength, and flexibility. In our martial arts classes, we’re always working on these things.

We’re working on endurance — we want to make sure we can move hard and that we can do it for a while. We’re also working on our strength, both physically and emotionally, and our flexibility. We don’t want to be so stiff that we hurt ourselves.

So to get our kids moving, let’s encourage them to get out… get up from the screen.

Sometimes you can even set a nice little rule where you have to do push-ups and sit-ups in order to earn some extra time on the screen. That’s a nice one that I like. You can have set time breaks in there.

The weather is getting cold, and it is hard to play outside. But finding these games — things we can do inside, and coming into things like karate class — are important for keeping us healthy and safe. And for keeping our immune system strong, too.

So, enjoy those foods over the holidays. But don’t forget to get your workouts in too… and get sweating.

Thanks, and we’ll see you on the mat.
-Master Helsdon