When I had one kid, once she started sleeping through the night fairly regularly, I woke up at 5am a few days a week to exercise before work. With two kids, that seems harder to do. Every time I set an early alarm, at least one kid either has trouble sleeping through the night or wakes up very early, making an early workout difficult or impossible.
My own personal options seem to be to either wake up even earlier and accept the fact that I’m going to be very tired, or try to stay up later and exercise after the kids go to bed (usually around 8:30pm, with any luck…).
So, to the dads that find time to exercise, when do you do it?
This does depend on your kid, but I find it’s best to just allow them to be awake while you exercise. The perfect kid will wanna do it with you, but a good amount will be good doing something different in the same room. If they’re old enough for screen time, that’s another good time, or a time where they’re playing together.
Again, depending on age, this isn’t a sleep issue it’s a boundaries issue. My kid isn’t perfect, but once I set a boundary that this time is me time, and follow up by redirecting them to specific toys (you can play with your pikachu or you have some hot wheels, or you could use your magnatiles), my kid got the hang of boundaries pretty quickly. That doesn’t mean they don’t interrupt me, but it means I can redirect them again verbally without actually interrupting what I’m doing.
If they take a while to eat a meal, getting them set up with options that let them refill their own plate is another great option. mine will happily graze on raspberries and I have no issues with them eating the whole tray if they’re hungry, so it gives me a chance to set them somewhere where I can keep an eye on them but they’re occupied, and I can do my things.
None of these methods are all that reliable individually but in combo I could exercise most days for at least a half hour at some point in the day.
I’ve been lucky enough to work from home and have a partner who takes the kiddo to school as often as possible. In the last year I’ve still only managed to work out about fifty times total.
I think I’d probably have hit my fitness goal by now if I was able to cut out drinking though.
Not sure I’ll be able to, at least until my kid’s ADHD is better managed. Holy shit, nobody warned me about that.
I do mostly walking and sneak that in throughout my work day in the office, I’m regularly hitting 10k steps daily that way, though I’m a bit lacking on any other exercises (upper-body or strength training or anything else really). After I drop kids off for school, I’ve got about 30min free time before work starts, so I go for a 20 min walk and run up about 18 flights of stairs, then repeat again for lunch time and just go on random walks throughout the day. It’s 4pm right now and I’m already sitting at +10k steps before I’ve even left the building for the day.
The problem I have is replicating this routine at home or just starting up any other routine at home. At work, I’ve got the habit set, I just don’t even think about it, it’s just automatic, but at home with kids and distractions, it’s hard to get anything started, as I’m constantly getting pulled in two or three different directions everytime I walk in the door.
I talked to my therapist about this exact thing last month, and I came away with two things:
- Schedules will always eventually fail once you’re trying to account for 2 kids
- It gets better (eventually)
If the morning works for you, treat that like your default. But, if you have a rough/unexpected morning, give them (and yourself) some grace and see if you can squeeze it in after bedtime.
If you’re losing motivation because of the disruptions to your schedule, I feel that too; I’ve tried to zoom out a bit and focus on my numbers for the week / month instead of day-by-day to take myself out of that mindset as much. Hang in there dude 👍
I used to go to the gym, but now workout at home. Mostly body weight exercises and cardio. I workout after work, as I hate working up early. Mine are older now but even when younger they didn’t mine. The gym had babysitters and eventually I used the YMCA which had awesome childcare options.
I like walking, so my first kid spent a lot of time in the backpack carrier. But two didn’t work
One of my best memories is when we needed a break and went to a cabin in the Adirondacks. He woke up crying way early in the morning crying and I was in a panic that he’d wake everyone, so we went on a hike. I changed him outside, we walked a quick mile or two and he had his first bottle on the mountain, in the wilderness, no other humans nearby, watching the sun rise
That’s an awesome memory to have!
That 4am alarm sucks, but it’s all the me time I’m going to get.
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