HIIT with Kids

I love my workout time. It’s MY time, alone in my head with my crazy hip hop/pop soundtrack blaring in my ears . . . or to chat it up with my heavily tattooed buddies over weights at the gym. But my 10-year-old daughter loves to work out too, and guess what? She loves the same music I do (not sure what that says about me, but that’s for another post). So on weekends and vacations, we strike an accord: I go to the gym to lift, then come home to do HIIT cardio drills with her.

For those of you who’re unfamiliar, HIIT stands for high intensity interval training, and it is a short-circuit to increased stamina and endurance. You can change the exercises and intervals to suit your special needs (bad joints? no jumping for you!) and your fitness level (shorten the work intervals and then progress yourself by lengthening them gradually . . . and do the reverse with the rest periods).

Last week, my daughter made up this routine, and we did it several times through for about 50 minutes. I don’t know if our music was loud enough for the neighbors to hear, but it was earsplitting and we were jumping around and laughing and working up a great sweat together. Gather up your littles and give it a go!

Lil’ hint: if you click on that image, it’ll make it bigger. You can right-click on it and save it to your computer, print it out, and take it with you! Even without kids, it’s a great little circuit.

How do we keep track of time? I use the Bit Timer app on my iPhone – you can set your work, rest & repeat times and not only does it count you down with special tones, but it coordinates with your playlist so your music can be playing along AS YOU ARE TIMED. Best use of $.99 evah!

Do you ever exercise with your children? What do you do? Inspire us in the comments below!

© 2014, Sarah. All rights reserved.

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