Long time lurker, first time poster.
I have been following the SimpleFit program for a little while now, although I had a couple of months off at the start of the year with injury, a death in the family and a seemingly endless stream of house guests.
Moving on and putting all that behind me, I'm back into it and focused. My biggest obstacle now is also my main motivation. My daughter.
I work shift work, and setting aside a time to exercise uninterrupted is a luxury I don't always have. As a result, I am often forced to workout while looking after my little girl.
I don't mind exercising in front of her, as I think it's important that she grows up thinking exercise is just something you do. Also, we have fun together. I let her crawl over me when I'm doing push ups, give her a shoulder rides while I do squats and so on.
The problem is that I often take an hour or more to complete a workout that should take 15 to 20 minutes. I really enjoy working out with my little girl, but am I compromising my workout too much? What can I do to make working out with my daughter more effective?
Exercising around children
Moderator: cheapo
Re: Exercising around children
Hello and welcome,
Kinda hard to make a call on this one. You need your 20 minutes of uninterrupted workout. Reaching that point of pushing past previous records or PR's is important. I understand the shift work deal very well and at one point for over a year worked 72 hours a week. Probably the toughest time I had was staying in a consistent routine. Remember though that once a week you only need to squeeze out 20 minutes of your time. I would suggest at a minimum getting that time in while she is sleeping or during a period when she is occupied where you can watch her. The other two days should be about 10 minutes or less give or take so just being generous assume you take 20 minutes 3 times a week you only have to give up an hour a week. It's important to put that time in without distraction so your focus is wholly on the task at hand. If that is too difficult there are other things you can try besides Simplefit.
For example:
Greasing the groove: return to an activity repetitively throughout the day such as pullups and pump out a few reps. When I first started Simplefit I would do a few pullups everytime I went out my back door. For a while I made a commitment to pump out 10 pushups everytime I went down or up my stairs. You could also make a plan to do certain exercises with your daughter as your playing and make a game out of it such as every 10 minutes do some repetitions of different exercises and involve her somehow. i.e. air squats while holding her and overhead pressing her as you do them.
for aerobic you could hunt down a used baby cart for runners on ebay or craigs list etc.
Get a baby back pack that you can hike around in and do the exercises with. You just want to make sure she is safe as you do them and won't fall out. But pullups and airsquats can be easily done and give more of a challenge. Pushups could be an issue if she isn't strapped in but you might think about doing one arm pushups on an angle that would keep her seated in the pack.
There are tons of possiblilites but ultimately it comes down to your ability to push yourself beyond your previous abilities and that takes some concentration and effort and you will need to have 100% focus on that during that time.
Good luck and welcome again!
Kinda hard to make a call on this one. You need your 20 minutes of uninterrupted workout. Reaching that point of pushing past previous records or PR's is important. I understand the shift work deal very well and at one point for over a year worked 72 hours a week. Probably the toughest time I had was staying in a consistent routine. Remember though that once a week you only need to squeeze out 20 minutes of your time. I would suggest at a minimum getting that time in while she is sleeping or during a period when she is occupied where you can watch her. The other two days should be about 10 minutes or less give or take so just being generous assume you take 20 minutes 3 times a week you only have to give up an hour a week. It's important to put that time in without distraction so your focus is wholly on the task at hand. If that is too difficult there are other things you can try besides Simplefit.
For example:
Greasing the groove: return to an activity repetitively throughout the day such as pullups and pump out a few reps. When I first started Simplefit I would do a few pullups everytime I went out my back door. For a while I made a commitment to pump out 10 pushups everytime I went down or up my stairs. You could also make a plan to do certain exercises with your daughter as your playing and make a game out of it such as every 10 minutes do some repetitions of different exercises and involve her somehow. i.e. air squats while holding her and overhead pressing her as you do them.
for aerobic you could hunt down a used baby cart for runners on ebay or craigs list etc.
Get a baby back pack that you can hike around in and do the exercises with. You just want to make sure she is safe as you do them and won't fall out. But pullups and airsquats can be easily done and give more of a challenge. Pushups could be an issue if she isn't strapped in but you might think about doing one arm pushups on an angle that would keep her seated in the pack.
There are tons of possiblilites but ultimately it comes down to your ability to push yourself beyond your previous abilities and that takes some concentration and effort and you will need to have 100% focus on that during that time.
Good luck and welcome again!
-
Horsetrank
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Thu Apr 05, 2012 3:37 pm
Re: Exercising around children
Thank you. There's some good ideas there. I already have a few strategies that I'll start putting in place over the next few weeks and I'll see what works and what doesn't.
Cheers.
Cheers.