Getting teens off the couch and active is challenging! Often teens are more content to stay at home and play video games or hang out with friends instead of going outside. Getting your teen in a healthy cycle of exercise won’t happen overnight, but using these four tips you can help your teen construct a workout routine that will make them feel happy and healthy!
Meet Them Where They Are
Teens can struggle to be active because they may not know how to enjoy exercise. In which case, it can be beneficial to explore different activities with your teen. Trying different workouts can help broaden your teen’s horizons and will build a library of knowledge of healthy outdoor activities. Going forward, this can help your teen decide what they enjoy, what they dislike and what types of workouts they want to continue to practice.
A good idea to help figure out which activities your teen enjoys is to try a new form of exercise each weekend of the month. For example, by going on a hike, to yoga, to the gym and for a swim over four weeks can help expose your teen to new activities they might have never considered. Even if they demonstrate patterns of defiance, keep working with them. Help them find something they want to stick with!
Keep Things Fun
A reason your teen might not want to get active is because they feel pressured and self-conscious if they don’t have experience exercising regularly. One practice to help your teen break out of their shell is to keep the activities fun. This can change their preconceived notions of exercise and allow them to build confidence while being active. You can use phrases of encouragement to motivate your teen. Try to keep them focused on themselves and not worry about the abilities of others; workouts are about one person improving themselves, not measuring one’s progress against others.
Be a Role Model
Another great strategy to encourage your teen to be active is to model healthy exercise habits. Having a role model such as a parent who demonstrates regular exercise will keep them motivated to build their own schedule to stay fit. Once your teen has found an activity they enjoy, help them construct a schedule to form routines; Once they are in the habit of working out, they won’t need reminders to be active on a week-to-week basis.
A role model that exemplifies good exercise programs for themselves will inspire a teen to stay active. It can be easier for a teen to catch on if you plan a day every week to get workout in, even if you and your teen have separate activities. Perhaps scheduling a day or two every week to go to the gym with your teen will routinize their physical activity, in turn forming positive habits for your teen.
Help Build Goals
One final approach to getting your teen active is to encourage goal-driven exercise. The benefit of goal-driven workouts is that they provide a mark of success teens can use to self-motivate. Objectives can vary, spanning from personal improvement and increasing strength to regularly attending group exercise such as spin or yoga. However, in order to keep your teen consistently active it is important to develop targets in order to foster commitment to constant practice and scheduled workouts.
An idea to endorse setting goals is to simultaneously set marks for you to achieve with your teen. This will increase the camaraderie your teen feels while exercising and encourage them to push higher objectives and greater improvement. If you both set goals, then it is very possible that you will both end up advocating for the other to stay active and feel accomplished. Great job!
Final Thoughts
Getting a teen active isn’t an easy task. Motivating teens to move is so much harder when alternative choices are chilling out to Youtube or browsing Instagram. With these ideas, hopefully, you can help build positive routine exercise for teens!
