Training and kids and training with kids

As you all probably know, our family consist of me and Thomas, five dogs and two kids. Two lovely, sensitive, lively and energetic boys aged nine and five. Naturally we wish they learn to enjoy the healthy and sporty lifestyle. We want them to learn to love some kind of exercising; it doesn't need to be running or skiing or any other of the sports we do or anything goal-orientated, but we want them to find their own way of staying active.

Heia Norge! And Finland too!

The current hobbies for the boys are more cultural than sporty. L, 9 years, plays piano and sings in Cantores Minores, a world famous boy choir, and has choir rehearsal three times a week in Helsinki, 32 km away from our home. Both hobbies take so much of his free time that there just isn't time for any regular sport hobby, despite how much we and L himself would like him to have one. He loves especially skiing, cycling and handball, so we try to be able to cycle and ski with him as much as possible. Tiny-A, 5 years, goes to a music school once a week and would like to start with dance lessons next fall. REAL street dance lesson, not any kids' dance, this is very important! He LOVES dancing, running, jumping on a trampoline, doing all kinds of stunt tricks and cycling, and would like to do these all day long. He is also really competitive and not the best when it comes to dealing with losing, so you can imagine what happens when he wants to compete in everything with his four years older big brother. And this happens like fifty-nine times per day. 😬

As boys' music lessons and rehearsals take three to four evenings of our week and in addition to those there are all the concerts during the weekends, it is pretty often when we have to be a little bit creative to get all the training fitted into our calendar. I have ran numerous runs in the central park of Helsinki with a dog or two or three while L has been taking his singing lesson. I have trained verbal cues and mat training at a football field during his piano lesson. We have done socializing with puppies in Helsinki city center with some metro and tram rides and shopping mall visits during an orchestra rehearsal of st Matthew Passion. We have picked up A from kindergarten 10 km away from home so that Thomas drives to the kindergarten by car and I run there with some of the dogs, and then I take the car and continue with A to his music school and Thomas runs home with other dogs. And not to even mention all those cross-trainer, yoga and strength training sessions at our training room after boys have gone to bed.

Don't need to train alone even at the late evening yoga-session!

But absolutely the most we like to train together. If we are training during the daytime when boys are still awake they most likely want to join us. It's really great that both of them are nowadays cycling so fast (thanks to the fact that A was able to change into 20 inch kids bike with gears, no jogger trolley to bring with us anymore) that we can run our shorter tempo runs (up to 10 km) and warm ups for intervals while they cycle. When we are running intervals (hills or short intervals, up to 500 meters) boys normally run their own "interval training" with shorter distance and at their own speed. And sometimes they just want to sit by the road and cheer to us while we pass them. Strength training is boys' absolute favorite, then they join us almost every time. Naturally they don't do anything with weights but they learn to do some simple exercises using their own body weight. Or they just goof around with dogs' balance balls. Doesn't really matter, they are being active anyway.

One of our favorite sports to do together is swimming. When we go to the swimming hall or to the lake during the summer, we normally swim and play for a while together and then one of us adults swims his own swimming training and then we change, so that both of us get to swim at least half an hour on our own. And the we finish up with some more time together. We also love to take long walks in the forest so that we have plenty of time to climb up all the rocks and hills we possibly can and play kuuro-gömman, as A calls hide-and-seek. We would love to do some more climbing together and are really looking forward to all the climbing centers to open soon. One of us actually eve more than others...

So what's my message? Active lifestyle and training is possible also during the busy family life. Yes, it won't always be optimal or how you would like your training to be, but the most important thing is to do something. Scheduling, flexibility and compromising is necessary, but worth it. It actually helps you to go out and take the run or whatever kind of training you want to do when it says so in your family's weekly schedule or your own calendar.

I hope that our effort to introduce training and being active as a lifestyle would be something that kids would grow into and it would be a natural part of their life also in adulthood. But at the same time we want them to see those days when we feel too tired for a run and choose to take a long walk in the forest instead. Or change strength training to some yoga. It is really important to be able to tell apart the days when you just feel lazy regarding the training and taking the run anyway would help you to feel better, and when it's necessary to have an extra day with just a long walk. We want them to be able to be compassionate towards themselves and listen to their bodies, and not to do the training "because I have to." Training should always be something you do for yourself, to feel good. It's not something you have to perform to yourself or to others or to look good on social media. Good training doesn't mean biggest muscles or longest runs, it is about taking care of your body and mind.

Being active has been scientifically proven to help people in so many ways when it comes to physical and mental health, so I really feel it is important to keep that as a priority. When it comes to training yourself I feel like it is totally ok to be a bit selfish here (often hard for us mums, I know) and that will in the long run pay off for the whole family. If it helps, think what kind of example you want to show to your kids. Take care of yourself, you are worth it!