TV fitness coach Joe Wicks is encouraging parents to embrace active mornings with their children this summer, as a new poll reveals widespread parental concern over inactivity during the six-week break.
Wicks is promoting his free five-minute animated fitness series, “Activate”, urging youngsters to participate and combat sedentary habits throughout the school holidays.
“What I’m trying to do is create resources to get kids active,” Wicks said.
“We know that many parents struggle to get their children active during the summer holidays.
“I really do want to get more families exercising.”
Speaking from a primary school in North London, Wicks added: “I’m hoping that Activate is something that is used by parents and teachers to help their children find a little window for movement, because we know that even for short little bursts of exercise has a massive impact on their energy levels, their physical health and their mental health.
“One of the biggest kind of barriers for people is time – they think they need an hour a day, or they need loads of activity and facilities and equipment.
“Actually, with these exercise workouts, you just need your body weight.
“It’s a five-minute little window and it’s a little win – it’s a small daily win.
“I always say that you know five minutes is better than no minutes. And maybe you do one, you feel great, and you do a second.
“And what I’m really hoping is that parents see how much their children enjoy this and actually want to take part together, because then the children see this positive role modelling happening, and that would be a great way to start the day during the summer holiday.”
It comes as a new poll of 2,000 parents of four to 11-year-olds in England, conducted by Censuswide in the first week of July, found that 88 per cent worry their children will have too much sustained sedentary time over the summer holidays.
Under one in five (18 per cent) think their children will achieve 60 minutes of daily physical activity every day of the week during the break.
Wicks was joined on the visit to Colindale Primary School by Health Secretary James Murray to promote the use of the Government-backed exercise programme, which is available on YouTube and CBeebies.
Mr Murray told PA: “We know that even little bits of exercise are really important for people’s health, and we want to make sure the kids get into good habits.
“All those little bits of exercise really add up and make a real difference to people’s health.
“So with these five-minute videos that Joe’s made and they’re good fun and they get you involved, it’s a really good way of getting people active, and I think if kids can watch these videos over summer on the iPlayer or on CBeebies, they see how they can get active and do little exercises, which keeps them more active and healthy, and gives them good habits of the future.”
He added: “When kids are in school, there’s structured activity – there’s PE and there’s sport and so on.
“I think some parents are thinking: ‘Well, what’s going to happen over summer? How do I make sure my kids keep active?’
“And this is an easy way for kids to put a little bit of activity into their daily lives, and it gives parents that reassurance that their kids are keeping active and keeping healthy.”
Created by Wicks and backed by Government funding, the series contains five-minute workouts to get children moving to popular songs from Gala to Olly Alexander along with songs from Bastille, the Spice Girls and Rizzle Kicks.