WHY PARENTS SHOULD TRAIN LIKE AN ATHLETE
You, as a parent, are an athlete.
Running after the kids when in danger or during playtime requires athletism. You get on the ground with them to play with dump trucks requires mobility.
Your kids like spinning around while outside and will ask you to spin them and play a variety of games that require jumping around.
In each of these scenarios, you put your body under the same stress as an athlete.
It’s not as intense, but the stress on the body is still there. If your body is not ready for that stress, then that is where you can experience nasty soreness, aches, pain, and worse, injury.
While playing with your kids, you can lower your risk of injury and not feel fatigued all the time.
Train like an athlete so you can get your body strong and resilient enough to play with your kids and move around the yard like a boss. You will also make everything else feel easier, like carrying groceries, yard work, and going up and down the stairs. Your quality of life will improve when you take care of your body.
WARM UP LIKE AN ATHLETE
Before you start training like an athlete, you should be warming up like one first. A proper warm-up does a couple of things for you:
- Warm up the body (duh)
- Clean up weak/painful links
- Mental/emotional preparation
- Facilitate motor learning (practicing and improving movement patterns)
A proper warm-up should be doing these things for you, helping you move and feel better. Help you warm up the main movement pattern for the day and have the mindset to get to work.
When done correctly, the risk of injury lowers, your chronic aches and pain dissipate, and you’re amped up to get after it. Here is a guide on what that looks like:
- Self-myofascial release techniques (Foam roll 1 minute total on the biggest or most demanding exercise for the day)
- Bi-phasic stretching (stretch the same muscle you just foam rolled, 30 seconds)
- Corrective Based Movement (work on one of these, Sequencing of movement patterns, stability, smoothness of the movement)
- Stability-based Activation (Posterior side of body, little pump)
- Foundational Pattern Development (Warm up the main exercise for the day, 3×5 with slow and perfect form, practice and perfect)
- Central Nervous System Stimulation (get your CNS fired up and ready to go. Think quick and explosive movements)
This guide is vague and very generalized because it will look different for each person. For example, you have a leg day today and the main exercise is squats. You know that your calves and quads are tight.
You will foam roll those areas and then stretch, while another person has tight hips, so their warmup will look different. Go back to the goal of a warmup, it’s to help you be prepared to perform and feel good. Make your warmups personal.
STRENGTH TRAIN LIKE AN ATHLETE
Now that I covered warm-ups, let’s get into strength training. Strength is the foundation for every physical characteristic. For example, want to run long distances? You need strength to absorb the ground forces of each step. You also need strength to push into the ground to move forward. To maintain good mechanics while running, you need strength. Without strength, the body will not go far and break down.
Same thing when you’re in the yard with the kids. Without strength, the body will compensate, and joints will suffer, or worse you land wrong because you do not know how to absorb impact or don’t have the strength to do so. I go into more detail on this in my Deceleration blog post.
Not only do you need strength, but you should also know how to generate and absorb forces quickly in multiple directions, like an athlete.
You will want to strength train to build your body to manage these forces without fear of injury or debilitating soreness. You can also use strength training to increase energy levels, reduce fatigue, and improve the enjoyment of playtime with your kids.
It is not a good feeling telling your kids no when they ask you to play with them because you’re too tired. Getting stronger and improving how you move will not only improve your quality of time with your kids but your overall quality of life.
Now that you know the why, here is how you want to focus on these movement patterns:
- Squat
- Hinge
- Lunge
- Push
- Pull
- Carry
Each of these patterns has so many variations, the important thing for you to understand is to not get stuck with one variation or tool.
Rotate between exercise variations, especially the ones that are multidirectional. You go into any commercial gym, and you will see most people lifting in the sagittal plane. This is the up/down type of movement like barbell lifts.
Nothing wrong with it, but your body is meant to move in all directions. When you’re playing in the yard or on the ground with your kids, it’s multidirectional. Train those directions, practice, and get strong.
You will want to hit each of these patterns at least twice a week. However, if you want to split that up is up to you and your availability. As a parent, I know it can get hard to train, so I limit myself 3 days a week with an upper, lower, and full body split.
Make sure your training plan is flexible for your lifestyle. Kids get sick, or they have events coming, so you might have to reschedule a workout. If your plan is flexible, you will stay on track compared to hitting a single muscle group once per week 5-6 days a week. When you miss a day, you throw off the whole week for your training.
Find what you can do consistently and sustainably that allows you to get results and recover. More on recovery later.
I also cannot stress this enough when it comes to strength training, form is everything. Always practice good form and technique. This will ensure that you keep your body safe and moving and feeling well, especially as you get older.
Practice good form.
CARDIOVASCULAR TRAINING
Training like an athlete means being well-rounded and that means having a strong cardiovascular system. This is important for a couple of reasons, the important one is your health.
Consistently doing zone 2 cardio will give you the biggest bang for your buck to improve heart health. If you are not sure what zone 2 cardio is, you can read about that here.
Zone 2 cardio will also improve your aerobic base, which will allow you to work more, or play more without fatigue. Another cool benefit of zone 2 cardio is the recovery aspect.
When you build your aerobic system, your ability to recover between strength training sets and highly intense bursts of activity increases. What this means is it can take you less time to recover from the same amount of work.
Performing low-intense cardio like zone 2 cardio will also improve your recovery rate compared to doing nothing at all.
As a parent, having a better aerobic system is priceless, as you can tell from above. So go put on your favorite movie, show, podcast, or whatever helps you pass the time and get the cardio done.
You can use any machine you want for cardio; it doesn’t matter. Be sure you keep the intensity low. I like using these cues to keep the intensity going too high:
- Nose breathing
- Talk test
- Heart rate between 120-150bpm
FLEXIBILITY AND MOBILITY
Part of living a long healthy life while moving and feeling well is having mobility. Mobility allows you to put your joints in a full range of motion with control. It also allows you to get in awkward positions without getting hurt.
Like an athlete, you as a parent get in weird positions because of your kids. There have been countless times I had to reach back behind me while driving to hand my little one’s food or their dropped toys.
If I were stiff, I could not have done that comfortably or driven off the road.
Now, if your strength training with a full range of motion, with a focus on multidirectional movements, mobility will not be much of an issue. A little bit in the warmup and on the rest days will be enough.
If you are extra stiff, you will want to have more sessions on mobility and focus on a slow, full range of motion with strength training.
Mobility training isn’t sexy or fun, but when you’re 60+ years old, you’re not going to look back and regret doing mobility work. So, just do it.
EAT LIKE AN ATHLETE
If you’re going to train like an athlete, you need to fuel like one. Proper nutrition is going to have an influence on how you feel and perform with your training, but also how you feel during the entire day.
Most importantly, you want to be a role model for your kids on how to eat. They are watching you and will repeat your actions more than what you tell them to do. Monkey see, monkey do.
Ideally, you’re going to want to focus more on whole foods. Protein is a good example, if you want to build and maintain muscle mass and strength, you need protein. You will want to aim for 0.7g-1.0g of protein per lb of goal body weight per day.
Eat all the fruits and vegetables you want, no limit on what you can eat there. Limit processed foods, this doesn’t mean completely avoid them, just limit.
I know I love pizza and burgers, would be unrealistic to say never eat those again. I am not asking you to do that either, just limit those foods and treat them like a special treat, not a weekly occurrence.
Put simply, don’t eat like an asshole, and get your protein and veggies in.
RECOVERY
Training like an athlete can put stress on the body, especially when you push yourself to be better. This stress can accumulate to overtraining and results will start to backslide, you want to avoid that by focusing on your recovery strategy.
I would argue that recovery is just as important as the training itself. Recovery is when the body adapts to the stress you applied during training. Without recovery, there is no adaptation.
Here are things to keep in mind on recovery:
- 7-9 hours of quality sleep (sorry new parents)
- Hydration (water & electrolytes)
- Nutrition (protein & carbs)
- Light movement (zone 2 cardio, walking, mobility)
These are the big rocks for recovery, the other things such as the sauna, cold emersion, and cool tech toys, are little pebbles. They can help but not as much as the big rocks.
Consistently do these on your rest days, which I call recovery days now, and you will notice a difference in how you feel.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Parents, you don’t have to play sports or even be athletic to train like one. As a parent, you need your body to perform like an athlete to keep up with your kids.
God forbid, they are in a dangerous situation, and you must sprint to your child to get them out of that situation.
Right now, are you confident in your ability to sprint to save your child without injury?
It’s an extreme situation, but you should be prepared for it. I am CPR certified, I never want to use it, but I train for it in case I ever do.
The same thing applies here, prepare your body for the worse, so you are confident in your ability to move your body. Train your body not just for the present you, but your future self as well.
Train like an athlete now, so your future self is healthy enough to play with your grandchildren. Think about your future self being able to move independently, and not needing help to sit on a toilet.
What you do now, will influence your health and mobility in the future.
You only have one body, make it count.
I hope this gives you insight into what training like an athlete means and gives you an idea on how.
If you want more tips, sign up for my monthly newsletter with the form below. You can also email me directly if you have any questions, at cory@caruthersfitness.com.