Involve family and friends in fitness activities

Do you wish you could exercise with family and friends?

The best times are those we spend with our family and friends yet in our busy lives it is becoming increasingly difficult to find space to spend quality time with the people who matter to us. At the same time staying fit and maintaining a healthy life style is getting more difficult yet more important.

Have you tried exercising with others but experienced problems and your workouts just did not work out?

Different ideas of a work out, incompatible goals, seemingly conflicting abilities, likes and dislikes all conspire to make it a real challenge to exercise with a partner yet it makes sense as:

Running and exercise by yourself can be lonely;
Running can be time consuming and eat into family time;
Partners and family members can begrudge your fitness time when they are not involved; and,
When some members of the family are unfit they limit what the rest of the family can do.

Relationships, fitness and performance suffers

When we fail to involve our family and close friends in a shared approach to a healthy life style our life fails to be as good as it could be and in many cases major problems result that undermine relationships, lead to unhappiness and even the end of relationships. Some of the implications include:

Partners and family relationships suffer as we fail to spend quality time together;
Our exercise declines as we do less or avoid it altogether;
We feel guilty for taking time to exercise rather than be with family and friends;
Conflict and arguments can result over time and money dedicated to fitness;
We are unable to do as much together when we are unfit;
Holidays can be difficult with conflicting energy levels and ability to do activities;
Food planning can be tricky with conflict between healthy and unhealthy eating; and,
Sleep patterns are different which leads to even less time together and conflict.

Improve your relationships, your fitness and the lives of the people you care about

When we incorporate time together exercising into our relationships with family and friends we not only improve our health and fitness but we enhance our relationships, raise our quality of life and become more capable of achieving more in life. Some of the benefits include:

Creating and achieving shared goals;
Enhancing your relationships through shared experiences;
Spending quality time together;
Learning together and doing more;
Aligning sleep, diet and energy;
Saving money through low cost fitness activities;
Planning fitness activities and other aspects of life together;
Achieving more by working together; and,
Enjoying better relationships.

Taking action to exercise with family and friends

The best relationships are those where the people involved choose to do so due to a shared interest and common goals. This means that before working on making the relationship work you need to establish or re-establish the basis for the relationship. Clarifying your personal objective and asking your existing or potential partners to do the same helps establish the foundation for success. The following steps will guide you to successful exercise with family and friends.

Clarify what really matters for you.
Find an exercise partner.
Set shared goals.
Determine ground rules.
Plan training and a schedule.
Do it and review it.
Celebrate and establish new goals.

How can we help you exercise with family and friends?

To help you exercise with family and/or friends we provide an ever expanding range of resources. Many of our products and services are free while others are for sale which helps us reinvest in the development of Partnerunning. Check out the following products and services:

We provide a range of programs and resources to help you and your partner achieve your fitness goals and are continually offering new materials to assist you. Some of the services and information available to you include:

Partnerunning
Partnerships That Matter
Level 1, 181 Bay Street, Brighton, Victoria, Australia, 3186
Phone +61 3 9607 - 8548
Fax + 61 3 8679 - 0542
Email:

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