April 29, 2009

Can families actually exercise together?

By Louise McNulty, Catholic News Service

In today’s fast-paced world, it is hard for family members to sit down to dinner at the same time. Yet there are health care professionals who try to get families to exercise together and families that find time to do it.

Elyria Memorial Hospital Center for Health and Fitness in Avon, Ohio, offers a Family Day program every Sunday afternoon so that families can exercise and play together.

“Schools today tend to limit, remove or make physical recreation programs optional, and this inactivity leads to health problems such as obesity and early onset diabetes,” said Family Day manager Ann Schraibman.

The center is not a place for children to roam freely because there are swimming and therapy pools and “equipment simply not made for small bodies,” Schraibman said. But the staff believes that families exercising together can instill in younger children a lifetime habit of exercise. Family Day permits members to bring children or grandchildren as guests so that they can play or swim together.

At St. John West Shore Hospital in Westlake, Ohio, Cynthia Rimko, a licensed physical therapist, is director of rehabilitation services. The hospital is a joint venture of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine Health System and the University Hospitals Health System.

Rimko is a firm believer in family exercise.

“The primary benefit of exercise is always health,” she says, “but when families exercise together they encourage each other. And sharing the same experience provides a common topic of conversation.”

She would like to see more family activities translated into family exercise programs where there might be rewards for walking, hiking or biking a certain number of miles.

“Since 9-11, there’s a tendency to value family more,” Rimko says. “But families are getting more and more sedentary. Parents are driving kids to sports and sitting on a bench to watch them.” Rimko would prefer to see parents involved in physical activities with their children.

Diane Kalgreen, chief financial officer of a local trucking company and a member of St. Sebastian parish in Akron, Ohio, couldn’t agree more. Her family long has been involved together in exercise.

“I decided early on that I didn’t want to be one of those moms who sat on the bench while her kids ‘went and did,’” she says. “I’ve always wanted to be with them, doing things together.”

The “together” things can get complicated, Kalgreen admits. Her daughters, now teenagers, went to Michigan when they were about 7 and 8 and discovered Mackinac (no cars allowed) Island. The girls loved it so much that their mother promised they’d go back every year.

She’s kept the vow for nine years. “We bike for six or seven hours a day in any weather,” Kalgreen says. “Last year it was in the rain.”

The girls joined a ski club in grade school, and Kalgreen decided to practice with them on weekends. “It was kind of pricey, so at first we only made day trips. The girls understood that if we skied, we’d have to give up other things.”

This kind of thinking influences the family’s vacation planning. “My girls are 15 and 16, but they’ve never been to Disneyland,” their mother says. “I’d rather go to the mountains than to a theme park.”

In 2003 the family hiked in New Hampshire, which Diane describes as God’s playground. “It costs nothing to go into these parks. Hiking is free. We can climb the rocks, go into the rivers, and there’s no reason to be self-conscious because it’s just us.”

Have there been rewards for the family from their exercise focus? Kalgreen cites closeness as a byproduct of their time together. And one recent summer, in a fit of laughter—covered in mud after a rainy bike ride at Mackinac—one of her daughters announced that some day she hoped she could take her own children to the island because it was so much fun!