There are many activities we do with our children, that with a bit of effort can increase the effectiveness, calories burned, and muscle strength.

Today, I went rollerskating with my daughter, a favorite activity of ours.  My goal is to get my heart rate elevated for a prolonged period of time, sweat a bit, burn some of those calories and even build some muscle.

If you hold your arms out to the side, up in the air, for a second, its easy, same thing when you squat down. BUT, if you keep your arms there for an extended period of time, you will begin to feel the burn as gravity does its work and the muscles begin to work as you are holding them there.  Same thing, with the squat.  So what I do is keep my feet moving and work my thighs by squatting down into the moves and using my thigh muscles to push my feet out and pull them back in, all while maintaining that squat.

Keep moving until you feel the burn, then hold it a bit longer to make it worth it.  I use the burst mentality to make the most of my time.

3-5 minutes of warm up.
3 minutes of stretching muscles.
20 second bursts of movement in the squatted stance with 10 second intervals of relaxed gliding between. (3 minutes 30 seconds total at a time)
3 minutes of cool down.

Today, we were only at the rink for a couple of hours. (1 hour of it that I could skate) So, I did several reps of the above workout.