9 Tips for Staying Fit as a Family from Fitness Guru John Abdo

A healthy lifestyle as a kid leads to healthy adults, according to John Abdo, fitness professional, trainer and inventor of the Ab Doer Twist fitness equipment.

You don’t need fancy equipment or a gym membership and you don’t even need an hour each day to improve your health and the health of your children, according to Abdo. Get started right now instilling these healthy habits in your whole family, together as a unit for better accountability and overall health of each member.

Abdo is an authority on life motivation, health, fitness and athletic conditioning. He is a former Olympic coach who trained many Olympic and World-Class athletes, including Olympian Bonnie Blair and is an inductee into the National Fitness Hall of Fame. He has established himself as a leading expert in motivational education for many athletes and fitness enthusiasts.

Abdo gives 9 tips on what families can do to make a fit lifestyle fun and effective.

Teach your children good habits early – They may be the ones telling you what food to buy and for Abdo, that’s ok. It’s better to have some accountability in your family, even if it comes from the smallest members. “Kids know when they’re not eating right,” he says. When you make being healthy part of their lives, it becomes their habits too.

Splurge on one session with a personal trainer – Sit down as a family and make a plan with this trainer about how you can get fit together. He or she will have new ideas and fun tips on ways to make exercise fun and effective. If you can afford it, have the trainer come back once a month or every other month to help keep your family accountable.

No fancy equipment required for good exercise – Even a couple gallon jugs of water and a broomstick can be fabulous fitness tools. Holding the gallon jugs, you can do squats. With a broomstick, you can pretend there is resistance when you do squats over a chair, curls with your arms or twists.

Abdo says many athletes train this way – with absolutely no weight but with resistance from your own muscles (“compensatory resistance”). Not only does this protect your joints from damage done by heavy weights, but it also trains your muscles for strength, believe it or not. You don’t need a whole weight rack to be strong.

Grab your sofa cushions and squeeze them with your knees to work your legs or abdominals or your arms to work your chest and arms.

Grab your kid’s Nerf® ball or a tennis ball and squeeze it 20 times for what Abdo calls “a nice muscle pump.”

Use your own body weight – Jumping jacks, push ups, lunges, etc. – these are all great exercises that require no equipment and very little space.

Short bursts of activity can actually be more effective than 30 minutes or an hour – Abdo says we’ve been trained to think of exercise in specific time allotments – half an hour or an hour. This is because at gyms and fitness clubs, a class needs to be long enough to make it worth coming for.

In reality, he says if you jump on the treadmill or the stationary bike or punch the heavy bag for short bursts – like 5 minutes – it can actually be more effective because you are pushing yourself hard, unlike a leisurely walk on the treadmill.  Very important: You have to go all-out to benefit – 1 minute to warm up, 3 minutes high intensity and 1 minute to cool down.

Abdo called this HIT – High Intensity Training. He says these short bursts are more beneficial than long sessions, especially when they are sprinkled throughout the day or week.

Make it a competition with your family – who can do the most jumping jacks or sit ups? When you make it a game or a competition, kids get into it and it instills some drive in them too.

Designate a team captain each time – take turns, as a family, making up a routine for the rest. Even your 3 year old can be part of the fun.  Don’t laugh – it teaches your children leadership skills, dignity, confidence and self-esteem to teach others. And it reinforces the habits when they teach others these healthy skills. It also solidifies your family identity as a team.

This responsibility and confidence not only helps their health, it can also encourage them to try new things in life and become more successful later on.

Post tips on the refrigerator for the whole family to see – type these up and print them out so you can remember. Make a list of the fun activities your family likes to do to stay healthy in this list so you won’t be at a loss for ideas.

Get your dog involved – don’t just make your dog fetch the stick; both of you go after it! Your dog is a bundle of energy – take advantage of this and get moving with your pet.

So try these with your family – don’t wait for your New Year’s resolutions. You can get started tonight!

To learn more about Abdo and his fitness recommendations, please check out his website at www.abdoertwist.com.