Health Fitness Benefits of Being a Cycling Parent

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Health Benefits of Being a Cycling Parent

Our number one job as parents is to protect our children. How can we do so if we’re not around? In addition to improving one’s overall health, regular exercise has been proven to extend life.

Cycling is arguably the best low-impact cardiovascular exercise. The idea of soaking in great scenery while having fun with your kids while prolonging your life through aerobic exercise is amazing!

Here is a quick list of benefits:

Strengthen Cardiovascular

Lower Body Strengthening

Burn Calories

Weight Loss

Getting into a workout program is difficult at first but adult fitness becomes routine after a while. Integrating simple morning exercises along with weekly family bike rides can greatly improve your health. Please consult a doctor, physical therapist or trainer to determine the best exercise regimen for you.

What about things like smoking?

Although there is no study that I have found that proves cycling can be attributed to quitting smoking however it helped me immensely.

Cycling Benefits for Children

We’ve heard the same rhetoric since we parents were kids. We had Atari, VCR’s and cable. Our parents warned us about being lazy and getting outside to play. You know what? They were right!

Fast forward to the current generation and we as parents have more sloth to battle than our parents could have ever imagined. Kid fitness is rapidly declining. Internet, mobile phones, texting, digital cable with DVR, iPods and more. Inside of each of those categories are sub categories such as MySpace and video messaging. Don’t kid yourself, if you had access to that technology at their age, you’d be just as bad.

Today, kid's diets are horrific. At times, I’m just as guilty here. At the end of a busy day it’s hard to gear up for “Battle Broccoli” when you can have a peaceful meal with Chicken Nuggets. The key is to make an effort.

We are barraged with commercials of happy meals, sugar cereals, soft drinks, frozen pizza snacks…the list goes on and on. Even if you limit the TV time to abate the junk food influence, the supermarket is swamped with junk food minefields…don’t get me started on the checkout aisle!

What Is The Result?

There are alarming rises in body mass indexes, obesity and heart disease. We grew up as couch potatoes and are raising children to be even worse than we were. The problems are abundantly clear to us all however by nature Americans look for the path of least resistance. We spend an enormous amount of time and energy looking for a pill or fad diet. If we balled all of that energy up and topped it with some good old fashioned common sense you know what we’d come up with? Eat healthy food (you can eat the bad stuff once and a while in moderation). Get up and get some exercise. That’s it in a nutshell.

Easier said than done? Please check out the sample activity chart.

It’s more realistic than you think.