YouTube Video on Motivating My Kids and Myself
I posted a video over the weekend, my 8th YouTube video already! In this post, I’ll recap what I said on that video and memorialize it here at my blog in addition to the YouTube channel.
This video idea came from my daughter, who I proceeded to badmouth in the video for her lack of interest in moving. She took it well, and it motivated her to get focused on her goal of making the war canoe team at camp, so she needs to develop some upper back strength and leg muscles. I have great kids that are so much fun to hang out with, in the garage or otherwise.
Executive Summary
The summary of the main content of the video is me explaining challenges faced when trying to get my kids to move more than they do. I think there are some similarities in the experience I have motivating my kids and the experience we all have trying to motivate ourselves.
The video also includes a real time experience of my own from last week when I found it challenging to get up from my cozy bed and out to the garage gym for a day of squats.
Even if you don’t have kids, this video can help you fight your inner child who may be stopping you from getting to the gym!
Main Takeaway: No Rush, They’ll Come to You
In the video I lament the lack of opportunities for my children to move their bodies, especially during the school year with homework and with the cold weather outside. Then I talk about some different things we’ve done to get them motivated to exercise. After struggling with some of those at times, I’ve stepped back. The plan now is for me to wait for them to have a reason to get in shape. When that happens, they will come to me, and I can help them. It works so much better that way, especially with middle school aged kids.
Not sure what the catalyst will be, but I’m ready. Maybe they will get teased for their body. Maybe they’ll want to look good to attract a potential boyfriend or girlfriend, or maybe they’ll want to perform well in a sport. When the catalyst happens, my kids will know who to go to for advice when that time comes. I didn’t have that growing up. Really happy my kids will have that.
Paraphrased Transcript of the Video
This isn’t breaking news, but kids in general don’t move nearly as much these days as they have in the past. My kids aren’t any different. Motivating them and inspiring them to move more is something I spend a lot of my parenting time working on. I leave the academic and cultural stuff to the wife for the most part.
One of my kids moves constantly, the other two don’t have as much of a natural urge to move. The two kids who tend to resist movement will do one practice at school or one activity that includes movement and they’ll point to that as a reason they don’t have to move any more. They’ll say why do I have to exercise, I had squash today, or I went for that walk earlier?
Mixed Results with External Motivation
My daughter didn’t make the basketball team at school, so she isn’t doing a sport this trimester at school. The resulting edict came down from my wife that went something like this: if you aren’t doing basketball this winter, then you’ll have to get out to the garage and do some movement either on the treadmill or rowing machine. Go figure something out with your father.
In that context, doing something active can feel like punishment for the kids. So, it’s a fine line between trying to encourage movement while at the same time not making it feel like punishment or something with a ton of negative energy around it. Because there have been times when they just aren’t into it and I can come off like A drill sergeant
Spring Deadlift Program
Last Spring, I got my boys to run a program of 5×5 on deadlifts and linear progression. It was a super basic program, basically just included deadlifting with escalating weights over the course of 8 weeks.
Eventually we lowered volume and worked up to a peak week where we tried to see how much they could lift with a single rep. They were excited to do it when we started and the weights were light. They were not as excited as we got into week 6-8. But I made them stick with it, even incentivizing them with a cash payout. And on the final day they were pretty pumped up.
After that, I haven’t pushed them on working on any other lifting, and the plan from here is to model positive fitness behavior and eventually when they want to get stronger or leaner, they will know who to come talk to.
And it’s already happening to some degree…maybe a month ago, my younger son, who joins me every morning in the garage to shoot baskets and watch sports highlights, he came to me and said he wants to work on getting stronger. He’s only 8.5 years old, so obviously lifting weights needs to be approached with caution. We settled on a simple routine of 2 days a week of traditional lifts and one “strongman” workout.
There’s a lot of good info on the subject of kids and training that the Barbell Medicine team recently put out. Click here to read more from them.
In the Moment, Exercise Usually Fun
Like most things with kids, they tend to enjoy it when they are doing it, but getting them to start doing something is the challenge. Getting them from the warm, cozy comfort of the couch where they have a book and are very comfortable is challenging. For my daughter, she loves to use the excuse of homework, and would be content just sitting at her desk for the entire afternoon without moving, because its easy.
I think that’s probably an exaggerated version of what we all struggle with when it comes to fitness motivation. Its something we never really grow out of. Like this morning, waking up and getting my training started was a struggle. I didn’t sleep well last night, I felt a bit sore and wasn’t looking forward to sets of 8 reps of squats to start with
It’s Just Science: Inertia
Basic physics, objects at rest tend to stay at rest, objects in motion tend to stay in motion, so it’s really all about that first step. That first step is so much harder in the winter time when the difference between your warm and cozy bed and a frigid garage gym is huge.
So, stay motivated. Appreciate that you are healthy enough to train and have solved enough of your basic needs such that you can debate with yourself over voluntary exercise!
