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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.