How to stay active over the summer holidays

The 6-week school holidays are almost here and for lots of women having the children at home all summer means even less time to fit in a workout. The good news is that it is not impossible to work out in the school holidays, even whilst juggling the busiest of schedules, you just need to be committed and a little organised.

You could even get the children involved, it will benefit their physical and mental health and can be a bonding experience. Plus, it helps to fill some time during the day when you are not sure what else to do.

The most important thing for success is to know what you want, to be mindful and remind yourself often otherwise you can forget, and the weeks will just pass. Make the commitment to yourself and your children to be as healthy as you can for them.

Here are some ideas to help you keep fit over the summer.

Make your workouts count. Long gone are the days where you need to spend an hour on the treadmill. Plan in a quick 10/15-minute HIIT session before you get ready in the morning. Ask the children to be your helper and time the activities, you could even challenge them to see who can do more of each exercise. A simple HIIT is to choose 5 exercises such as star jumps, press ups, squats, running on the spot and ab curls, do 40 seconds and rest for 20, then move onto your next exercise. You can do 1 round or add as many as you have time for. Activities like this can be done while children play in the garden or if they are having some screen time take 10 minutes for yourself.

Plan ahead. Every evening think about your next day and plan in where you can get your 10/15-minute workout. Remember some activity is better than no activity, so look for activities the children will enjoy, go swimming, take a walk, visit a trampoline park or climbing centre, or find an online workout you can follow at home.

Get the children involved, play tug of war, make a fun children friendly circuit to get the family moving together, or try hide and seek where you run around looking for each other. You could even offer a family challenge where you can keep score of how many star jumps or knee lifts they can do. Maybe offer an incentive, if you are all able to do some fun exercise you can go on a trip in the afternoon.

Get into sport. Sport might not be your go to but while you have the children home look for local activities, play football in the park, find a local tennis court, play table tennis, go for a jog with the kids on their scooters, go for a bike ride together, find some rocks to explore and climb, find a bit hill to climb or a new walk to go on and have a picnic at the end.

Turn housework into a workout, just add movement, dancing with the duster turn the music up and think high energy, wiggle whilst you wash up, this is set to make most small people laugh. Do a squat between hanging items of washing on the line, lunge to pick things up around the house, there will be plenty of picking things up with the small people home all summer. Get the children to help you wash the car, clean the windows or sweep the garden, these are all great forms of movement, and if you are able to give them a little pocket money you are also teaching your children to work.

Get outside. Being in nature is great for everyone, but especially children, so walk to places if you can, run around in the park or garden, have a water fight on hot days, get some water balloons and play dodge ball.

If you really struggle for time break your workouts into micro sessions, hold a squat whilst washing your hair in the shower, stand on your toes and balance while you wait for the kettle to boil, do 5 squats before you sit down, walk around the house 100 steps every hour. Small acts of movement will have a compound effect.

Most importantly, just be active when you can, don’t give up at the start of the summer as you will be surprised what you can achieve when you are focused.

Be positive about exercise and movement in front of your children so they learn to make it part of their day and have a healthy attitude towards being active.

Above all don’t beat yourself up, you are doing the best that you can, some days you will win, others you will struggle and that is ok.