Hey y’all. I’m really excited to write about this Fitness Monday topic, but I feel like I’m writing this a little seat of my pants, y’know? So if you have anything to add, please do, in the comments!
Before I had kids, I was a gym rat. I ran every morning. I went to the gym and did strength training, swam, played racquetball, etc. I didn’t have a car, so I rode my bike everywhere. And fitting it in wasn’t a problem... I could spend as much time as I wanted on it.
After I had kids, fitness--like that--seemed impossible. Thankfully, at some point, I had a few realizations…
(1) This is my life. My life includes kids! If I want to be fit, I’m going to have to work with/around my kids.
(2) The level of fitness I was at pre-kids might not be a reasonable goal right now because I simply do not have the time to pour into it. But. Some level of fitness is better than none at all!
More after the break...
In thinking about how to “set the scene” for this Fitness Monday topic, it occurred to me there are multiple ways that having kids makes fitness complicated. Eg:
For a lot of women, having kids means being pregnant, gaining weight, and often changing their activities and activity level. For some of us, these are the first clues about what lies ahead.
The really small fry (I’m talkin’ infants here) turn adult routines upside down. You just want to keep them happy, including in the middle of the night. It can be really hard to wedge in time for exercise, especially if you’re exhausted.
And the big kids? They have school (and all kinds of things going on there), they often have outside activities, they have their own social lives... really, you all just keep getting busier and busier.
So where do you start with fitness when you have kids? From my experience… start where you are.
If you haven’t had kids and you’re thinking about it, now is a great time to get fit and to think about developing a routine that you can carry through pregnancy and beyond. Believe me, it will pay off in spades later.
If you’re pregnant now, anything you do during pregnancy will help afterward—you will be so happy you expended the effort. I have three kids myself… the first two pregnancies, I was pretty good… yoga, swimming, walking, and/or hiking… the third pregnancy, I was sick sick sick, and I was pooped. And I was pooped afterward. Yeah, part of it was that I had 3 kids, but part of it was that I was really out of shape compared to where I was after the first two.
If you have a little baby… a sling, a carrier (like a Baby Bjorn, an Ergo, a baby backpack, etc), or a stroller can be such an incredible fitness tool. Walking is great exercise, it often calms babies down, the “resistance” they offer helps you lose weight (and their weight—the resistance—increases as your fitness increases). I’d also say that one can feel “cooped up" with a little baby, and having to take a walk gets you outside, which is helpful for the head. Walking with friends is great, but only if it works for you. I used to hike with a group of other moms. We would meet at a designated place at a designated time. If you couldn't make it, no problem. But hiking with a flaky buddy--that is the pits.
Fitting fitness in with actual kids… There are three ways to go. (1) Find a gym that has good child care. (Or make a trade with a friend.) (2) Set yourself up at home, and be religious about squeezing your workout in when your spouse is home, when your child is napping (or at school) or when your child is occupied. (3) Be creative about adapting around them (easier to do with older kids). I don't have the money to do #1, and there's just a little more inertia around getting to a gym. So I concentrate on #2 and #3 (but if #1 works for you--do it!!).
Fitness with your kids can be an “investment” (time, equipment, etc), but it really pays off. We hike regularly as a family, and the kids love it. Small fry start off in a carrier or a backpack, then gradually they've hiked more and more. An Ergo carrier is great, because it carries kids to 45 lbs and beyond, and you can roll it up and stuff it in a backpack when it's not in use. We also bike regularly as a family. Our oldest rides his own bike, and my husband tows the toddler in a trailer while I have the preschooler on a trail-a-bike. Are these the awesome rides we did before kids? No, but we're having fun, and the kids are being indoctrinated. ;-)
Here are some other things we do/have done:
*Walking/jogging while the kids are on bikes/big wheels/etc.
*Doing calesthenics when the kids are playing on playground equipment. (If you feel self-conscious about this, either choose an unpopular park or choose an unpopular time of day.)
*Playing soccer with them or shooting hoops.
*Going swimming (swim them around on your back).
*Teaching them to ski (lucky enough to have very reasonable passes and gear programs at a small local area).
*Walking/biking to school to pick them up.
*Doing jump rope together. (Jumping rope as an adult will kick your heinie.)
I would say that right now, involving my kids in the actual activity can be a pain in the ass; I’m looking for more of a burn, they're not always enthusiastic, they want to do one thing while I want to do another. But my husband and I are very outdoorsy people, and if we want to have any reasonable chance of a future with more, longer, and more challenging bike rides and hikes, if we want to go backpacking and do more skiing and other activities with the kids, we have to train them now.
Another thing I’ve learned… when my husband and I go on dates these days, we often do “active” dates. We used to love playing racquetball before we had kids. Recently, dh suggested we do that on a date. We had a blast. We’ve also done fast, steep hikes on dates—again, the kind of thing we enjoyed pre-kids and which we don’t get to do these days. For us, the dates are important—the reconnecting, the communicating—and these kinds of activities facilitate that. While some of you might balk at the idea of paying someone so you can hike, I think it’s great—we love it, and it is a relatively cheap date.
One last tip I'll share... there are tons and tons and tons of free exercise sites, free parenting sites, and even some which do a decent job of combining them. When we first relocated to Colorado, I found that the athletic moms I was meeting weren't really great friend material for me. And I found that the friends I was making weren't really athletic. I have found that checking in with other people, getting support, getting information and so on online has filled in a gap which I haven't been able to find locally. I guess my point here is that it can be really useful to have a "community" to check in with, to be accountable to, to help keep you motivated in this quest. This is by no means an exhaustive list:
See Mommy Run
Baby Fit
Moxie Moms (Please note that this one is not free and not found everywhere, but some folks might find it useful.)
Mother Talkers has regular fitness/training diaries.
You get the drift. Google your area, google your specific thing (yoga, running, whatever), and you might be surprised by what you come up with.