Exercise!
It's a New Year, which means resolutions, right? Not really. The Ingram family has always strived to maintain some level of physical activity, be it hiking, biking, chewing...
Last year we started taking the kids to the gym with us, albeit sporadically. We always had a good time together playing soccer, dodge ball, 4 Corners, etc. The gym provided hours of family entertainment. This winter the weather has been incredibly cold and the kids and I have been 'forced' to do activities here at home. We would normally love that, and we did for about 2 months. After a time, though, you get tired of your at-home elliptical, your at-home Leg Magic, your Wii Fit, and various other methods of at-home work-outs. We decided to try something different since the roads have been relatively clear all week.
We home school, so it's pretty easy for me to get my kids up at my discretion and say, "We're doing this today!" Today, I woke them up for breakfast with Daddy, then chores, then off to the gym. My car's thermometer said it was 23 degrees outside. My ears told me it felt colder. We got to the gym, which was relatively empty. We had the entire floor to ourselves even though the weight room and elliptical/treadmill rooms were both packed. We ran 20 laps, followed by stretching, 20 push-ups, and 50 sit-ups. By my research, the standard gym requires 18.3 laps for 1 mile. Being an 'above average' home school family, we bumped it up to 20. Before you get mad at me, smile. I will always throw our home school status out there because it's a part of what makes us the Fab 5 Ingrams!
The kids were tired, obviously. I usually wake them up at 0700, but today I woke them at 0630, which isn't a big deal except that we had a very late weekend and didn't manage to catch up on sleep that we lost during New Year's activities. We had done this as an experiment last week and I timed all of us. There was a marked improvement in all of our times except for one, but that's okay. The object of the timing isn't to see who is the fastest, but to give us an idea of whether or not our overall shape is improving. The push-ups and sit-ups were done at our leisure. In other words, I said to my children, 'We're all doing 20 push-ups and 50 sit-ups. I don't really care how long it takes you as long as you do them right. Take breaks if you need to.' I also gave them permission to walk some of their 20 laps, but encouraged them to keep moving at a good pace even if they did need a break.
Overall, today's work-out was a great one. We'll do the same work-out for 4 days this week and then switch to something completely different next week. I'm thinking crab-walks and lunges across a gym floor might be fun. The best part about today was that no one spoke Whinese. No one said, "I can't," and no one cried from the pain. Everyone sucked it up and did what was asked of them, including me, and the general attitude was one of togetherness in fitness rather than togetherness in torture. We'll see how we feel at the end of day 4!
Last year we started taking the kids to the gym with us, albeit sporadically. We always had a good time together playing soccer, dodge ball, 4 Corners, etc. The gym provided hours of family entertainment. This winter the weather has been incredibly cold and the kids and I have been 'forced' to do activities here at home. We would normally love that, and we did for about 2 months. After a time, though, you get tired of your at-home elliptical, your at-home Leg Magic, your Wii Fit, and various other methods of at-home work-outs. We decided to try something different since the roads have been relatively clear all week.
We home school, so it's pretty easy for me to get my kids up at my discretion and say, "We're doing this today!" Today, I woke them up for breakfast with Daddy, then chores, then off to the gym. My car's thermometer said it was 23 degrees outside. My ears told me it felt colder. We got to the gym, which was relatively empty. We had the entire floor to ourselves even though the weight room and elliptical/treadmill rooms were both packed. We ran 20 laps, followed by stretching, 20 push-ups, and 50 sit-ups. By my research, the standard gym requires 18.3 laps for 1 mile. Being an 'above average' home school family, we bumped it up to 20. Before you get mad at me, smile. I will always throw our home school status out there because it's a part of what makes us the Fab 5 Ingrams!
The kids were tired, obviously. I usually wake them up at 0700, but today I woke them at 0630, which isn't a big deal except that we had a very late weekend and didn't manage to catch up on sleep that we lost during New Year's activities. We had done this as an experiment last week and I timed all of us. There was a marked improvement in all of our times except for one, but that's okay. The object of the timing isn't to see who is the fastest, but to give us an idea of whether or not our overall shape is improving. The push-ups and sit-ups were done at our leisure. In other words, I said to my children, 'We're all doing 20 push-ups and 50 sit-ups. I don't really care how long it takes you as long as you do them right. Take breaks if you need to.' I also gave them permission to walk some of their 20 laps, but encouraged them to keep moving at a good pace even if they did need a break.
Overall, today's work-out was a great one. We'll do the same work-out for 4 days this week and then switch to something completely different next week. I'm thinking crab-walks and lunges across a gym floor might be fun. The best part about today was that no one spoke Whinese. No one said, "I can't," and no one cried from the pain. Everyone sucked it up and did what was asked of them, including me, and the general attitude was one of togetherness in fitness rather than togetherness in torture. We'll see how we feel at the end of day 4!
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