Tag Archives: active

Get in Shape This Season with These 7 Fall Fitness Activities

Uncategorized, , , , , , ,


If you can stand to lose a few pounds for your health or simply love to find new ways to exercise, give these autumn activities a shot:

  1. Rake those leaves – Raking leaves can be a surprisingly decent cardiovascular exercise. Did you know you can burn up to 400 calories an hour by raking and bagging leaves? So get those garbage bags ready and round up your family for some great fall exercise (and a cleaner yard)!
  2. Go geocaching ­– A cool trending activity as of late is geocaching, a large-scale scavenger hunt where participants hunt for hidden trinkets and objects using GPS coordinates on their cell phones. These items may be hidden near mountains, on hiking trails, in provincial parks or around cities. You may be walking for a while or even have to hike to collect the trinkets. People can also get to these items by cycling or snowshoeing in winter (both of which burn over 400 calories an hour).

  3. Take an autumn hike or stroll – With the leaves changing vibrant colors, fall is arguably the most beautiful time of year. So why not take advantage of autumn’s scenic wonders by taking regular walks or hikes before the cold of winter hits. You can choose a new location each time! You’ll burn around 300 calories per hour hiking, and between 65-100 per mile if you’re walking.

  4. Try barre workouts – If you’re not a fan of the nip in the air and would prefer an indoors fall workout, try barre exercises. A hot fitness activity this year, performing different stretches and ballet moves on your own barre (or one in an exercise facility) can help strengthen muscles as well as greatly increase flexibility.

  5. Do some circuit training – circuit training doesn’t have to take place at a gym with special equipment, you can set up your own circuit activities at home or in your own backyard using walls, household items for resistance, and jumping ropes and a yoga mat! Use your imagination and have fun with it.
  6. Do mini commercial workouts – Let’s face it, most of us start spending more time inside watching TV as summer ends and the cooler fall months set in, but this doesn’t have to mean our fitness levels take a plunge. Look at commercial breaks as mini fitness opportunities. Each time you find yourself in front of the TV, make a habit of doing squats, sit ups, push ups or running on the spot during every commercial break. You’ll start seeing a difference in your fitness level in no time!
  7. Check out Jukari exercise classes – A new trending exercise called Jukari has emerged to whip us into shape! And it sounds ridiculously fun. It combines yoga, pilates, resistance bands and circus-like exercise techniques to create a whole-body fitness experience. Jukari can help tone and define muscle, increase balance and flexibility, strengthen connective tissues and burn fat. Sounds too good not to try!

Woo! There you have some fun fall-centric activities to help you lose or maintain target weight or just start you on a healthier path! Thanks for visiting DocChat!

Benefits of Activity Trackers

Uncategorized, , , , ,


Activity trackers are riding a fitness trend wave now, seemingly for good reason. For many, a good quality tracker can be a fashionable, intelligent and accountable way to get into shape or keep fit. However, they may not be for everyone as they do have drawbacks (stay tuned for our post about the drawbacks next). Some people argue the technology isn’t precise enough yet for the best of the best when it comes to fitness management, but here are a few reasons we believe a fitness tracker may be the nudge you need to reach your fitness goals.

Fitness trackers can:

  • Provide a true reflection of your lifestyle – Personal fitness trackers (PFTs) help calibrate a baseline by tracking your normal activities before you even start working out or reaching goals. This will help give you a decent reflection of your lifestyle, which may be less active than you think. While it may be a wakeup call, this is a great feature because it allows no room for denial about your current activity level and plenty of room to up your game.
  • Promote personal accountability – One of the best features of PFTs is that they help hold you accountable for reaching your fitness goals. If you routinely decline your evening walk, you have a little device to answer to who is counting and calculating your every fitness move. This helps many people push themselves a little harder, feeling more accountable to do their best.
  • Help you set and reach goals at your own pace – Most PFTs on the market today have several fitness options and are highly customizable. Many have a default setting goal of 10,000 steps a day, but you can easily change that to better suit your lifestyle. If you were largely sedentary before purchasing your PFT, it would be wise to start small by adding increments of a couple hundred steps every day and work big gradually instead of going straight for the gold.
  • (Kind of) track your sleep – Another fascinating (but debatable) feature of many PFTs is the sleep monitor function. Using its 6-axis accelerometer technology PFTs can also loosely keep tabs on your sleep by tracking your movements. This will be in no way as precise as being monitored at a sleep lab, but may a fair enough indicator of optimal versus inadequate sleep so you can look further into the issue medically if need be.
  • Count calories – As well as an activity and sleep tracker, your device will be able to help you keep track of how many calories you’re burning. Again, the technology isn’t quite at its pinnacle yet, so calorie counts may not be very precise and could even vary from tracker to tracker, but it will give you a loose idea of how much you’re taking in and burning off.
  • Create a communal fitness environment – The corresponding apps usually give the option of participating in a community of others who are using the same fitness tracker as you and have similar goals. Many people find this communal environment encouraging and motivating factor in becoming or staying fit. Most popular weight loss programs offer meetings to give this sense of community, but you can participate from the comfort of your home.
  • Help you find of renew your love for healthy living– All in all, fitness trackers may not make you crazy fit, crazy fast, but they are certainly an option worth exploring if you are having trouble getting motivated on your own.

Thanks for visiting DocChat! If you have any questions about fitness, wellness or weight loss sign up to DocChat today to connect with one of our very knowledgeable board certified physicians! Stay tuned for some of the drawbacks of fitness trackers coming up next!

 

Sports With Added Benefits For Kids

Obesity, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

Unfortunately, more children lead sedentary lives than ever before and the childhood obesity rate is rising higher and higher because of this (check out our post about that here). One third of American children are now overweight or obese, so it is more important than ever to get your child moving for at least an hour a day. We’ve investigated some great activity choices for children:

  1. Martial Arts – martial arts is one of the best activities for children and teens of any ages. Some of the benefits of martial arts include:
  • Mental focus and self discipline – sports like karate can be very good for hyperactive children who struggle with a short attention span. Karate instills a deep sense of self discipline, as it is a challenging and rigid sport. These skills, which often translate into other areas of the child’s life such as school and homework.
  • Learning to accept accomplishment and defeat graciously – there are often competitions where some children win medals and others do not, which can help the child learn to cope better with winning or losing.
  • Total body fitness – Martial arts are physically challenging and involve full-body exercise as opposed to sports like running where the child is only utilizing muscles of the lower half of the body.

 

  1. Dance – is a great sport to start your kids in at a very young age. Most dance studios offer classes for children as young as 4. Despite its reputation as largely a “girl’s sport” dancing is a great unisex activity. Dance teachers are pros at working in roles for boys as well as the girls of the class. Some added benefits to dance are:
  • Whole-body conditioning much the same as martial arts. Specifically, children will increase flexibility, range of motion and balance through dance lessons.
  • As dancing is a performative art, it gives children the added outlet of being creative and expressing themselves through movement they won’t get from other physical activities.
  • Children can combat stage fright and shyness in dance, as most dance schools have year-end performances for children to show off their skills to parents and the community. This can also help build self confidence.

 

  1. Swimming – is great exercise and teaches children valuable safety skills. Other benefits include:
  • Great cardiovascular exercise which can also benefit the lungs.
  • It is much more difficult for children to sustain a sport-related injury participating in swimming than most any other sport.
  • It caters to children of all ability levels, including those with physical disabilities who otherwise may not get chances to participate in physical activities.
  • swimming teaches life-saving skills that can potentially help the child save their own or someone else’s life.

 

  1. Tennis – this is a great summer sport. Some particular benefits include:
  • It gets your child outside for some vitamin D (make sure they are sun-blocked up)!
  • Tennis can help build teamwork and social skills. Kids have to learn to share, take turns and help others who may be having trouble.
  • Tennis provides skills such as balance, precision and agility. This physical conditioning will translate to virtually any other sport.
  • Children can get better at handling individual success and failure when competing in matches.

 

  1. Softball – is a good, non-violent team sport. Softball has many advantages for children and teens such as:
  • It gets children and teens outside
  • Team sports encourage children to learn and value working with others toward a common goal, this will help in school projects and later in the job market.
  • Softball helps the child learn and play different positions whereas some sports the child just gets one set position
  • Practicing, improving and working toward fitness goals such as speed and precision can help harbour physical self-discipline

Other good team sports include basketball and volleyball. We didn’t include hockey or football in this post because they can get very rough, but they still have their merits. Thanks for visiting DocChat today! We hope you return again soon.

 

 

 

 

 

16 Family Fitness Activities You Can Do Together

Health Tips, Uncategorized, , , , , ,

In this fast-paced, technology-dominated world it can be hard to get your exercise in, and statistics show an unfortunate decline in childhood exercise. So it is more important than ever to find creative ways to stay active so as to better your health and set a good example for your children (if you haven’t caught our article on children and inactivity, feel free to check it out here). We’ve compiled a list of fun activities you can do together regularly to help you enjoy some fam-time and instill the value of fitness in your children.

Explore The Great Outdoors

Take weekly family walks or hikes in different spots around your town or city. Together, you can research locations and choose a new one each week.

Raise The Roof

Hold a household dance party every now and then. Everyone stops what they are doing for 20 minutes of serious boogying! You can play dance games like Freeze Dance as well for extra fun.

Climb The Walls!

Find an indoor wall-climbing business that has adequate safety harnesses and training. These exist in most cities. You may have to travel to get there but if you all love it, it could turn into a fun biweekly family road trip.

Be A Family Of Fish

Attend ‘family swim’ a couple nights a week together at your local pool.

Labour Of Love

Work together to tend your garden or to build something, like a shed or porch outdoors. You can give the safer jobs to your children such as fetching supplies or holding and passing you tools. Both building and gardening are hard work and can be very rewarding. They would be great skills to teach your family.

Blade Your Way To Family Fitness

Get each member fitted out with roller blades and go as a family twice a week.

Pass The Baton

Set up a relay race in your backyard or all around your property with different activity stations, use a colored tie to pass on to the next as each member finishes.

Healthy Competition

Hold a weekly fitness contest. Whoever does the most sit ups or jumping jacks that week gets to pick the movie for family night, or gains a couple dollars for their bank.

Scheduled Slots

Have designated times to use the family treadmill and stick to them. That way each member will know when it is their turn to get their daily exercise in if they haven’t already.

Family Frisbee

Divide your family into two teams and have a routine ‘Family Frisbee Day’ in the park.

Chase A Good Cause

Train for, and complete a ‘fun run’ as a family for a cause you feel collectively passionate about. This will help with family fitness while also illustrating the importance of altruism to your children.

“Ready Or Not, Here I Come!”

Play a long game of hide and seek around your house twice a week with the whole family! This will be fun for any age, exciting for little ones and nostalgic for older members of the family.

Car Games

Make a game of parking your car – Let’s Move suggests “Park farther away and count with your children the number of steps from the car to your destination. Write it down and see if you can park even farther away on your next stop.”

Join The (Dance) Revolution!

Invest in moving video games such as Wi Fit or Dance Revolution and get your whole family involved by making a fun competition out of it, or just schedule a couple evenings a week to take turns playing without competing!

Summer Fun

Go to the beach and make sandcastles! Simple but fun for everyone. Or you can play beach volleyball.

Hit The Family Court!

Learn a sport together. If one of you is good at basketball, teach the rest of the family. Or learn to play “kick ball”, an incredibly fun combination of soccer and baseball. Get the neighbour family together for bigger teams and more fun!

Thanks for visiting DocChat we hope you enjoyed our family fitness ideas and that you’ll be back again soon!