Father and Son Workouts: Build a Bond and Get Fit Together!

Original article: Holly Smith, D.O. - Osteopathic Medicine, B.S. - Dietetics, NASM-PES Certified Trainer, Writer, The Fit Father Project & Fit Mother Project

Working out and focusing on your fitness is even more satisfying when you can share this healthy lifestyle with your family.

Father and son workouts are a great way to spend time with your son and for both of you to be proactive in improving your health.

Plus, you can show your son his old man still has it!

Maybe your son is already a star athlete in school. Or perhaps you want to motivate your kids to add more physical activity into their lives.

Either way, there are a number of father and son workouts that can have you competing with your son and pushing each other to improve your fitness levels.

Combine family time and fitness with the father and son workouts below!

The Importance of Exercise During Adolescence

Not only is working out with your son a great way to enrich your relationship, but it will also have numerous health benefits for your son.

Physical activity in adolescents will help build muscular strength, improve cardiovascular fitness, and improve cognition, mood, and sleep.

And you are sure to reap these benefits as well!

Introducing your son to exercise at a young age will motivate them to continue these healthy habits into their adult years.

This is especially true when they see you enjoying these father and son workouts with them.

And when your son sees how these exercise routines have kept their “old man” fit and healthy, they will want to carry these habits into their adult years.

Father and Son Workouts You'll Both Enjoy!

It is always more fun to work out when you enjoy the exercises that you are doing. This is true for your son as well!

Studies show that motivation for exercise in adolescents may be enhanced when adolescents participate in activities that they find enjoyable.

Plus, it is a lot easier to convince your son to work out if they see it as a fun activity instead of a chore or a necessity.

The 5 Best Father and Son Workouts

Shoot Some Hoops

If you have a basketball hoop in the driveway or a park nearby, a pick-up basketball game is a great cardio workout.

It can be a fun one on one competition between father and son. Or you can play different shooting games to test your technical skills.

Basketball is an excellent full-body workout and helps build strength and endurance.

Defense and rebounding will develop deltoids, traps, lower back, and core muscles, and running and jumping will improve cardiovascular fitness and build strong leg muscles.

Neighborhood or Park Runs

Get in shape by running right alongside your son! Studies have shown that runners experience an increase in performance when training with others.

Running with your son can benefit both you and your son's cardiovascular fitness and improve your run times!

You can choose a distance and go for a nice easy jog. Or you can add some friendly competitive sprint intervals to increase the intensity.

Once races start up again, you can even enter a local 5K or 10K run and make it a fun competition among the whole family!

Bike Rides

Group bike rides are a great way to stay in shape.

You and your son can go out on a ride with just the two of you, or join a club ride if you live in an area that offers these.

Studies have found that when working out, people tend to push harder when exercising with those that have a higher level of fitness.

For example, in a 2010 study, 91 college students were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: biking alone, biking with a high fitness training partner, or biking with someone of lower fitness.

All participants were instructed to complete minutes of exercise at 60-70% of their maximum target heart rate.

Results indicated that participants in the high fit condition exercised harder than those in the low fit condition.

Weight Lifting/Resistance Training

Lifting weights is a great way to build on your father-son relationship while building strength and gaining muscle.

By having your son by your side, you can make sure that both of you are using correct form throughout every exercise.

And you can motivate each other to finish out that last rep.

Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to finish that final rep when you have someone pushing you and spotting you on your last chest press.

Father and son weight training workouts should also involve variety!

A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that increasing the variety of exercise equipment available to children and adults increased their exercise participation and enjoyment of that exercise without altering their perceived exertion.

If you are at home and don’t have access to free weights, you can still get an awesome resistance training workout by doing bodyweight exercises or using resistance bands.

For example, bodyweight squats, lunges, and push-ups are just a few bodyweight exercises you can do together with your son that will build serious muscle and improve your strength.

Interval Training

Interval training is another activity you can do with your son that will build both cardiovascular endurance and muscular strength.

It can be fun to set up stations to do specific high-intensity exercises and then switch off with your son.

For example, you can do a circuit of intervals with 30 seconds on, followed by 30 seconds of rest. This can include exercises like push-ups, jump squats, lunges, and burpees.

You can have your rest interval while your son is doing his exercise interval. That way you can monitor each other’s form and motivate each other to give their full effort throughout the entire 30 seconds.

You can even make it a fun competition and count the number of reps each of you is able to perform during your intervals and try to best one another.

This will ensure a hard workout with maximum fitness benefits.

Go surf, and have fun. Surfing isn't a chore its a lifestyle - Functional End Goals

Book a trip with your son or daughter. Book the tickets, and put it in the calendar. Let that "what by when" drive you both to get out there and have a common goal to work towards

Father and Son Fitness and the Fit Father Project

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle as a father is not just about your fitness goals. It is also about sharing and promoting fitness to your family.

Losing weight, building muscle, and having a great looking body is definitely a perk of sticking to exercise and healthy eating habits.

But you also chose this path to decrease your risk of chronic diseases, improve your quality of life, and to be around for your family.

Father and son workouts are an excellent way to spend time with your son and to also share your knowledge of health and fitness with them.

So challenge your son to any of these workouts, and show him that their old man can still keep up with them!