For most kids and teens, summer is something they look forward to all school year. They dream of a time of being lazy, with dreams of playing all day, having fun, and staying up late.

But after a while, those activities become monotonous, and your teen becomes bored.

So how can you avoid the dreaded “I’m bored!”? You can help overcome this by creating an environment that promotes activity and exercise. By creating an environment at home that encourages movement and exercise, you’re providing your teen with tools to make healthy-living choices for a lifetime.

By developing a lifelong strategy that includes regular exercise, you’re instilling the tools to fight the dreaded “boredom” and mitigate stress in your teens and kids.

To develop an active lifestyle, start by setting a good example yourself. For example, exercising in front of your teen is an excellent way to establish the importance of regular exercise.

The CDC or Center for Disease Control recommends that kids and teens ages 6-17 participate in 60 minutes a day of activity, with teens needing 3+ days of strength-building exercises per week for optimal health.

There are a slew of benefits from regular exercise for your teenager, including;

• Improved cardiovascular fitness
• Build strong bones and muscles
• Appetite control
• Aids with digestive function
• Improved moods
• Decreased chances of anxiety and depression
• Reduced risk of serious health complications such as heart disease, Diabetes Type-2, osteoporosis, cancer, obesity, and high blood pressure

To get the maximum benefit of activity and exercise, there are three categories to target weekly.

Aerobic: Teens should participate in at least 45-60 minutes of activity that raises their cardiovascular and respiratory function every other day, a minimum of three times a week. Running, basketball, soccer, biking, skating, swimming, surfing, and hiking are all excellent examples of aerobic activities.

Muscle-Strengthening: When people think of strength training, they think of weights. But the reality is that you can get plenty of benefits from strength training by doing bodyweight exercises such as push-ups, pull-ups, and squats.  Muscle-strengthening exercises should be conducted for 60 minutes daily, 3x a week.

Bone-Strengthening: Bone-strengthening activities are those that provide enough force on the body to harden and strengthen the bone. Anaerobic activities that are explosive in nature, such as short sprints, tennis, basketball, and jump rope, are good examples of these types of activities. Performing bone-strengthening activities for 60 minutes a day, 3x a week, is recommended.

Creating an environment promoting activity and healthy living extends beyond just exercise. Exercise releases powerful neurochemicals in the brain that are essential to wellness and happiness.

What’s more, as the adolescent body is flooded with hormones, having an outlet such as regular exercise helps create homeostasis, or balance, in the body’s chemicals.

Regular exercise also is a significant reducer of stress. Often in stressful times, adults find ways to deal with it through self-medication, such as drinking alcohol. For teens, learning to live an active lifestyle creates a healthy strategy to reduce stress for a lifetime.

Problems Associated With Inactivity In Teens

The health impacts of sedentary life that lack regular exercise in teens can become significant.

Teens that don’t exercise regularly are at greater risk of developing energy imbalances, higher rates of obesity and high blood pressure, enhanced risk of certain cancers, bone marrow deficiency that leads to osteoporosis, and are at a greater risk of depression.

Conversely, active teens consistently show greater cognitive abilities, higher academic achievement, better classroom behavior, and report higher self-esteem and engaging social lives.

For teens struggling, whether physically or emotionally, sometimes more than exercise may be required.

If that’s the case, there are various treatment options to consider. You can consider outpatient treatment programs in the Los Angeles County area to diagnose and work through multiple issues before considering seeking treatment in out-of-county areas, such as total inpatient rehab Sonoma County options or others throughout the state.

The benefit of seeking out-of-county treatment options is to remove your teen from those stimuli that may be a trigger for those issues.

Creating an active lifestyle for you and your teens will give you the best opportunity for optimal health and the tools to help you work through stress while boosting your moods. But, sometimes, there are more challenging needs, and exploring the correct type of assistance, help, and treatment options may need to be considered.

The key to living well is through activity, and developing positive, healthy habits are easier to adapt in your teens than later in life, so stand up, get moving, and teach your teens to beat those summer blues.