Walk, bike, garden, and chase the kids around the neighbourhood. Just do not touch anything but your shoes, your bike, and the ground.
With the coronavirus competing with your will to live, a few things are certain. You need to stay home unless you are going out for essential items like groceries and pharmaceutical needs. If you do venture into the wild world of worry, you need to abide by the rules of common sense, which are also often those now in place in many places.
You must not touch common surfaces, even if you do not feel ill. The coronavirus is able to live on a wide variety of surfaces for numerous lengths of time, and its not worth the risk catching or infecting anything.
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Please, do get your exercise. It is important that you do not, however, visit playgrounds, benches, skateboard parks, outdoor picnic areas, beaches or any other shared common areas that may cause crowds of people to congregate, and shared surfaces to be touched and re-touched as we wait for the cases of COVID-19 to go down.
So, what can you do outside, if you cannot enjoy your usual haunts?
Here are five activities to try with your family. Stay happy and healthy in these extraordinary times.
Walking
This may seem so obvious it is absurd, but going for a walk is a great way to clear your head and get some much needed exercise. If you have a large family, you may think about venturing out in pairs, and perhaps at different times, or at least on different routes, during the pandemic. This can give you enough space to comfortably keep your distance from others, and stay your six feet, or two meters, away from passersby in order to avoid contracting the coronavirus from them, should they be infected.
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Harvard Health recommends that you walk from 30 to 45 minutes each day, in order to stay healthy, and to keep a pace that is comfortable for you, but not too comfortable. A brisk pace is recommended for best results.
Biking
Keep it simple and enjoy the breeze on your face. You do not wish to go hard on the trails or turn tricks, and risk seriously injuring yourself, as you definitely want to stay out of the hospital these days if you can. When biking, choose a path you know well that may not be highly frequented, or pedal around your neighborhood. With traffic levels low due to the pandemic and everyone staying home, this could be the perfect moment to enjoy the empty streets. Be sure to wear your helmet(s).
Exercise Stations
If you have a gym teacher in the house, they know this one. With your family, decide on a series of exercises. Sit-ups, burpees, jumping jacks, skipping, it all counts. Set up stations in your backyard in various corners and locations, or do so at the local abandoned soccer field, or even in an empty parking lot.
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Your stations do not have to be elaborate, simply areas you agree upon to do the exercises. Decide which activity is to be done at which station, and for how long. Will it be for minutes, or repetitions? Each person chooses a station and gets started. Times up! Rotate to your next area. Your neighbors might think you are crazy, but hey, you are the ones staying fit.
Gardening
As the sun peaks its head out, this is a great time to clean up the yard. Gather any remaining leaves from last fall, and if you can get your hands on some grass seed, get the lawn ready for spring.
Neighborhood Relay
This is a fun one I do with my young kids. Start together at your home, outside. Stage yourselves as if you are ready to race. The youngest in the group- we usually do this in twos, so one kid, one adult-says when to go. Off you go, “racing” down the sidewalk.
The youngest calls all the shots, and also says when to stop. (I let my kid win, but that’s because otherwise we face a tantrum at this point, but you do what works for your group).
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You keep on going, racing in bits and pieces, stop and go. If rest is needed, rest is given. You want to lie down on the sidewalk or the grass and gaze at the moon? That’s fine. Just get up and moving again, at some point.
Every time you come to a corner, the youngest chooses which way you will turn. The adult decides when to turn around and race back home, together. See how far you can get!
