Fun training challenges to do with your kids in the park, here's six you can do today

Photo by Yanapi Senaud on Unsplash

If you're wanting to share some of the fitness results of your gym time with your kids, and do it outside, I have some simple but challenging exercises for you.

My ten-year-old daughter announced that she was going to enter the school cross-country, and asked me to train her.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to do something outside with her and something physically challenging.

Here's the little program I made for our training. You'll find it fun to do outside with your kids, or just to do something different outside, which will challenge you. These exercises are simple, require no equipment, but give you a whole-body workout, and a good burst of cardio. 

My daughter's race was just 3 weeks from when she asked me to train her. I decided to focus on stamina, not endurance. 

Although I was targeting stamina-building, if you are over 40, you'll find the full-body components to be a good challenge as well. 

Here we go, six exercises as a set

1. Spring and sprint;
2. Lunges;
3. Pushups;
4. Lie and sprint; and,
5. Star Jumps;
6. Jog.

These will exercise your whole body, with a couple of maximum effort sprints for cardio intensity. It will also build some stamina through the transition from the last sprint into the jog.

Six exercises as a set

#1 Spring and sprint

Place a marker about 30m across a park. Preferably a park with an area to jog as well. For simplicity, I will assume that you are at an open park with a decent outside perimeter to jog around.

With your partner, lie faceup with your head pointing towards the marker. Place your legs down straight and have your hands by your side.

Count down and at "zero" spring up and run as hard as you can to the marker.

Take some deep breaths.

#2 Lunges

Lunge back to the starting point.

#3 Pushups

Take a deep breath, then set up for 5 pushups. Do whichever version of pushups you can manage.

#4 Lie and sprint

Lower yourself to the ground after the 5 pushups, rest a moment, and then count-down. At "zero" sprint to the marker as fast as you can, touch the marker, and then sprint back to the start.

#5 Star Jumps

Back at the starting point, do 20 star jumps.

#6 Jog

Now, jog 400 metres - returning to the starting point.

​If you can raise the jog to a running pace, then your stamina will benefit more.

Take a 2 minute break and do another set, as you wish.
​
If you don't have a suitable "marker", use a cap or a towel or a water bottle.

This set of exercises is a great way to spend some time in the park with your kids and to get a good body workout - getting up quickly from the ground is more tiring than it seems!. ​

PS My daughter came 3rd in the school cross-country. 

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