activity

water, games, outdoors, heat, summer, activity
Beat the Heat with Cooling Outdoor Activities
Beat the Heat with Cooling Outdoor Activities 960 720 Emilie

With today being the first day of summer, and the temperature reaching the mid 90s, you might be picturing a summer in which you barely leave your air conditioned house. But just because it’s hot out doesn’t mean that you can’t get some exercise outside. Hot temperatures open up a door for activities that wouldn’t be half as fun otherwise! So grab a water bottle and some water proof sunscreen, and head outside for these great activities!

1. Water Gun Fight. Water gun fights are great because they let you cool down even though you’re running around in the heat! Grab your water guns and even some water balloons. Try forming teams and have an ongoing summer competition amongst members of your family.

2. Visit some waterfalls. Take a hike at Van Campens Glen. It’s a shady trail, and only 1.6 miles round trip, so you won’t mind hiking it even on a hot day. Plus, the hike reaches a small waterfall and gorge, perfect for cooling you down! Or, go to Buttermilk Falls, which stands as the highest waterfall in NJ at 200 feet. There is also a pond at the end, and the best part is the hike can be as short or as long as you want it! There are stairs going to the waterfall right next to the parking lot so that you don’t have to hike at all, or you can choose hiking routes that are 5 miles, 6.4 miles or 7.5 miles long.

3. Play flashlight tag or play with fireflies. On these warm days, sometimes it’s best to get outside when the sun has set. Try some nighttime games once the temperature has cooled down by playing flashlight tag or chasing after fireflies! What better way is there to welcome in the summer?

4. Give your dog/car a bath. Grab some water and suds and give your pooch or vehicle a much needed bath. It’s just a matter of time before you have as much water on you as your dog or car does! You’ll walk away feeling productive, but also cooled down. Or if you don’t want to give your dog a bath, try getting a small kiddie pool and play with Fido in the pool!

5. Rent a canoe or kayak. Try renting a boat at the one of many jersey canoe and kayak rentals, such as Mick’s Canoe Rental where you can kayak on the rivers of Wharton State Forest, or the Princeton Canoe and Kayak Rental which provides you access to Carnegie Lake. These rental places provide you both the boats as well as places to actually use them!

6. Play Marco Polo even if you don’t have a pool! As long as you have a yard and a water gun, you can play Marco Polo. The person playing Marco can use a water gun, and instead of tagging people, they simply need to squirt others with the water gun. Soon everyone will be wet and having fun!

7. Make a giant DIY Slip N’ Slide. The DIY Slip N’ Slide by The Relaxed Home School uses some simple, easy to get items like a plastic roll and pool noodles in order to create an amazing slip and slide! This will give you a higher powered, much larger slip and slide than one you would buy at the store, and without breaking the bank!

8. Tie Dye some t-shirts. Grab the tie dye and get creative with t-shirts or bandanas for your whole family. It’s sure to be a fun activity, and you can hose each other down afterwards to get any dye off of you. Better yet, make some smoothies or lemonade to drink as you make your shirts.

 

physical, activity, exercise, motivation
Why Your Exercise Motivation is Low: And How to Fix It
Why Your Exercise Motivation is Low: And How to Fix It 960 685 Emilie

Exercising more is one of those things that we all know we should do, but is difficult for many of us to follow through on. Even though we may want to exercise, finding the motivation to actually do it can be a challenge. But the key to motivation starts by first understanding the reasons behind your lack of motivation. By understanding exactly why it’s difficult for you to get moving each day, you will soon be able to hit the gym with far more ease. The best part? Not one of these methods gives you a time duration or number of reps you must hit each day.

1. Gender Differences. Research has shown that males tend to report greater exercise motivation than females. After devising various motivating reasons for exercising, it was shown that this gender difference results for primarily two reasons. Although males and females find similar motivation for reasons like improving body image, males find greater motivation to exercise with the goal of 1) improving their sex life, and 2) having more energy to do chores around the house.

How to Fix it: Identify multiple reasons you want to be in shapeIn order to close this gender gap, try trading some chore roles with your SO, so that both of you are engaged in more physically demanding chores that might encourage you to exercise. Additionally, both genders can try writing out different reasons for exercising: improving quality of life, decrease risk of disease, controlling weight, lowering blood pressure, sleeping better, improving your sex life, having fun with family and friends, feeling relaxed, feeling happier, etc: and identify which are the most important to you. Finding several important motivating factors makes it easier to self-motivate than simply exercising because your doctor told you to or because you want to fit into that bikini. It is easy to lose motivation over one goal, but more difficult over several strong and varying goals.

2. You’re only intrinsically motivated. When it comes to exercise, most of us are fueled by intrinsic motivation. On the surface, this seems like a good thing. However, while this intrinsic motivation encourages us to exercise for several important reasons, it decreases the amount we care about exercising the second our intrinsic motivation goes away.

How to fix it: Increase your extrinsic motivation. There are several ways to do this, the most obvious may be setting external goals. Take out that pedometer or Fitbit and challenge your friends. Or agree to take that new kickboxing class with someone. By doing these activities with friends, you are more likely to follow through. If you like exercising on your own, use personal motivators: for instance, make yourself run to Starbucks for your next coffee run (using a latte or frappe as a reward). There are now Craft Beer Races: 5ks which reward you with craft beer and live music once your run is complete. Whatever motivates you, use it as a goal for yourself! Any goal that rewards you for exercising will act as external motivation. Another way to increase your external motivation is by focusing on the disease diminishing effects of exercise. This is an incredibly important aspect of exercise, but we often forget about it, focusing instead on our physical appearance or ability to feel happier post-exercise.

3. Your exercises are focused on weight loss/shape. A lot of us fall into this trap. When we exercise, we focus on exercises that focus on our physical weight or shape so that we feel better about our physical appearance. But research shows that although exercise normally increases positive body image, this is hindered when our exercise is focused on physical appearance. This can make it more and more difficult to exercise the next time around.

How to fix it: Change your focus. Even if your main goal is to alter your body weight/shape, stop focusing on this in your workouts. It will make it more and more difficult to workout each subsequent time, and overall, you will achieve the appearance benefits you want more quickly by being regularly active than sticking to a specific, unenjoyable workout schedule. Instead, choose exercises that you enjoy and get your blood pumping. There are plenty of more enjoyable activities you can pursue that help your cardio or strength, without focusing on a certain number of reps.

4. You’re not working out hard enough. This is probably the opposite of what anyone will tell you when you’re trying to get the motivation to workout more. They will tell you to start small, and that any activity is better than none. And this is absolutely true! Perhaps counter-intuitively, however, motivation for your following workout session will be higher if you worked out more intensely last time. Perhaps this is because vigorous activity leads to more enjoyment benefits than lighter exercise: such as release of endorphins.

How to fix it: Focus on fun. I’m not about to tell you to have a really hard workout every day with tons of burpees and push-ups. In fact, that’s the exact opposite of what sounds enjoyable or motivating. Instead, I will tell you to focus on what activities are fun, because the more you are enjoying yourself, the harder you are going to workout. Go play tennis or some ultimate frisbee with a friend. Go outside and play with your dog, or have a water gun fight with your kids. Just the other day our Director of Technology, Brian, put his Fitbit on his young son, and he proceeded to rack up over 20,000 steps that day! If you’ve ever seen a child outside playing, you will see them run around, then stop when they’re tired, and then get right back to running. Start focusing on fun instead of how long you “have” to be doing the activity for. You will break a sweat in no time and end up being more active. Choose activities you want to do or learn, not a 30 minute block of time you have to be active.

5. You’re choosing the wrong exercise program or activity. A lot of trendy exercise programs aren’t sustainable. This is because people participate in them because they’re simply the latest craze, not because they actually enjoy the activity. When choosing a new activity or program, several key factors have been found to be motivating: that the activity is 1. Interactive, 2. Challenging, 3. Competitive, and 4. Social.

How to fix it: Find an activity that is interactive, challenging, competitive and social. This is certainly a long and difficult list to meet. However, it is not impossible. Challenging does not necessarily mean physically demanding, it could simply mean that the activity encompasses difficult skills to master. These other attributes: interactive, competitive and social, are best met through different games. Try getting a few new heart-pumping games for your wii fit, or join a nearby casual sports league. If these don’t appeal to you, just grab some friends or family to play a game at a nearby park. Any activity that has a competitive aspect built in (no matter how casually competitive) it will make the activity more fun and engaging.

6. You’re comparing yourself in the wrong way. Comparing yourself to others or valuing innate athletic talent is a surefire method to decrease your motivation. We already know the negative emotional effects of comparing yourself to others, but it also drastically harms your motivation. This is because the more we compare ourselves to others, the more we look at athletic ability as innate (thinking someone is just naturally faster or stronger than you). But in reality, we can greatly improve our athletic ability if we are motivated to do so.

How to fix it: Work towards your own goals. Focus on improving upon your personal goals. Set a step count each day, and slowly try to increase it. Work towards exercising within your optimal heart rate zone. Work to increase the time, intensity, accuracy or skill level of your workout. Whatever you do, stop comparing your own workouts or your physical appearance to others. Remember that everyone has a different athletic background, and other people have played more sports or spent more time on cardio or weights than you. Start looking at being active as a skill to achieve instead of something some people have and some people don’t. The more you work at it, the better you will become.

So get out there and start sweating! Remember to stop focusing on how long your workout is or the number of reps you’ve accomplished, and start focusing on the fun of the activity. From setting goals and rewards for yourself, to being aware of your reasons for being active, these suggestions are sure to get you more and more active with each day!

Lowenstein, J.A.S., K. Wright, A. Taylor, and N. J. Moberly. "An Investigation into the Effects of Different Types of Exercise on the Maintenance of Approach Motivation Levels." Mental Health and Physical Activity 9 (2015): n. pag. Web.
Homan, Kristin J., and Tracy L. Tylka. "Appearance-based Exercise Motivation Moderates the Relationship between Exercise Frequency and Positive Body Image." Body Image 11.2 (2014): n. pag. Web
Al Kubaisy, Waqar, Mariam Mohamad, Zaliha Ismail, and Nik Nairan Abdullah. "Gender Differences: Motivations for Performing Physical Exercise among Adults in Shah Alam." Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences202 (2015): n. pag. Web.
Moreno, Juan A., David Gonzalez-Cutre, Alvaro Sicilia, and Christopher M. Spray. "Motivation in the Exercise Setting: Integrating Constructs from the Approach–avoidance Achievement Goal Framework and Self-determination Theory." Psychology of Sport and Exercise 11.6 (2010): n. pag. Web.
Breland, Hazel L., Hon K. Yuen, Laura K. Vogtle, Katy Holthaus, Diane L. Kamen, and David Sword. "The Process Associated with Motivation of a Home-based Wii Fit Exercise Program among Sedentary African American Women with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus." Disability and Health Journal 6.1 (2013): n. pag. Web.