Talk About Your Own Fitness With Them

Another way to create a positive culture of fitness in your home is to make it a regular topic of conversation. You wouldn’t think kids would be interested in the subject, but they surprisingly are.

Both Kate and I share with our kids what we plan on doing for our respective workouts. I tell Gus and Scout what lifts I plan on doing that day, how much weight I hope to lift, and my set and rep schema.

When I’m done with my workouts, they’ll always ask how I did and want to see the videos of my lifts (I record the last set of my lifts to send to my coach Matt Reynolds so that he can critique my form). Even when I don’t complete a set and fall short of my goals, my two-year-old daughter, Scout, will always tell me, “Wow, that’s cool, dad!” Her unadulterated and uninformed enthusiasm unfailingly takes away some of the sting of failure!

Being five years old, Gus is less easy to impress. When I don’t hit a set, he wants to know what happened. So I have to explain to him that it could be that I’m over-trained or that I didn’t get enough sleep the night before. I tell him what I plan to do in my next session so it doesn’t happen again. It’s an opportunity to show him that in life, sometimes you’re going to fail on the path towards your goals. When you do, you don’t get despondent — you re-evaluate and try again.

By regularly talking about my training with my kids, I’m reinforcing a family culture in which physical fitness is an important part of life. Exercising is what keeps us strong and healthy so that we can be useful human beings, as well as enjoy life to the utmost.

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