Is Your Fitness Fun?

 

As coaches for the kids program at CFP, we try to instill in the kids that fitness is fun. It’s fun to be active, meet new people, try new things, get a little sweaty, and get a little dirty now and then in the process. Most of the children forget that they are actually exercising. That is the beauty of our kids program. We don’t tell them that they are doing a good thing for their heart, or building inner ear coordination. We just want them to keep moving and always correlate fitness with having fun.

Correlating fitness with fun for adults on the other hand is a bit more tricky. As adults, it is sometimes easy to lose that inner drive to stay active and motivated to see results. Let’s face it, CrossFit and fitness in general, takes hard work. Whatever your goals, kipping pull-ups, double unders, five more pounds on your Snatch, it takes time and effort. We get frustrated and it’s easy to lose focus. We believe that if you can find a way to make fitness fun, in turn it will become easier.

For example, if you have been focused on running, and the more you run, the harder and harder it becomes to be motivated to run, try mixing it up by coming to a Crossfit class. If you have been frustrated with trying to get that double under or kipping pull-up and just can’t do it right now, take a break for a week and attend a Kettlebell class to build grip strength. If you find yourself not smiling through the sweat during a Kettlebell session, try an Olympic Lifting class. Since we as adults have certain goals we want to accomplish, we are not going to spend our one hour at the gym playing dodgeball all day, understandably. However, you can not come to the gym day in and day out and just Deadlift.

Variety is the spice of life both inside and outside the gym. So even if you cannot make it to a class or go running, try to make an effort to get the park and swing on the monkey bars, go hiking, go for a walk, a bike ride, go bowling, play tennis or golf…etc. Try to remind yourself that no matter where you are to get a good sweat, lose weight, gain muscle, attain more skills, be the healthiest person you can be…etc., you should also be enjoying what you are doing.

Every now and then we throw in a “kids” game or activity for the adults warm-up, i.e. Dodgeball, cartwheels, GrannyBall, Tag… This is an everyday thing in the kids program. We end every workout with a game. Why do we do this? We do it because as long as you are having fun you also may forget that you are actually burning calories, getting stronger and becoming a healthier human. Fitness is fun so don’t forget to smile through the sweat!

Coach Jen Grenell and Coach Juli Carisch