Daily Excerpt: Parenting in a Pandemic - Chapter 2, Personal Trainer

 

Excerpt from Parenting in a Pandemic by Dr. Liz Bayardelle

Chapter 2: Personal Trainer

Exercise is important for everyone, but it’s even more important for kids.

Kids who get at least some activity on a regular basis are less likely to be overweight, have lower risk for degenerative diseases, have more confidence, do better in school, and are more successful when they finally become adults.^[1]

Who doesn’t want this for their kids? That’s why we usually make sure they participate in PE class, put them in sports, ensure they have time to play at the park, let them run around with their friends, and do fun family activities like go to a trampoline park or some other playplace. But wait, due to the rampaging virus we can do exactly none of those things. Great.

Even when all you want to do is hand your kid an iPad and get about your quarantine day, it’s important that we still ensure our kids are getting at least a baseline amount of exercise. Before I go into how to do that, let me introduce you to two different archetypes of children. You’ll know immediately which category your kiddos fall into. Physical fitness is equally important for both types, but the action plans to create it look very different.

Child Archetype #1: Meet the Manic Tornado

It is a scientifically-proven fact that kids, especially the younger ones, have a sadistic amount of energy.^[2]

Seriously, in the study cited above, experimenters compared children to high-performance athletes (as well as normal, flab-tastic adults like us parents) and the kids had more energy and recovered from fatigue faster than either of the adult groups. You're not imagining that these kids are running inexhaustible circles around you. They actually are.

While this is a controllable circumstance under normal conditions (with 8-hour school days, extracurriculars, sports practices, parks everywhere, etc.), it is slightly problematic^[3] trying to control this amount of child-energy in a shelter in place scenario. There are only so many games of ‘the floor is lava’ that can be played indoors before everyone gets bored, frustrated, and you and/or your child end up in tears.^[4]

Without public parks to run off their energy, school to occupy their days, or sports practices to make them at least slightly less energetic at the end of the day, it is often very challenging to deal with your little ball of energy without going absolutely stir crazy (or just surrendering to the inevitable and letting them destroy your house...which feels like a really valid option on some of the more desperate days).

If you have a small child or a particularly energetic child, wearing your “personal trainer” hat is essential. Well, it’s only important if you want to take preemptive steps to avoid a scenario where you are cowering on top of the kitchen island and your kid is running in circles around your weeping form while brandishing some kind of improvised weapon and screaming like a banshee on a warpath.^[5]

Now, if the previous description didn’t really sound like your kid^[6], it means that you have the other type of kid: the content couch potato. Let’s meet this fascinating specimen...

Child Archetype #2: An Etymology of the Content Couch Potato

The Content Couch Potato (solanum tuberosum lecti) is a perplexing creature.

Its natural habitat is usually a darkened bedroom, though it can also be found in room-darkened dens, family rooms, and other couch-bearing spaces. You may also be able to catch a glimpse of the Content Couch Potato if you sit very quietly near the bathroom or kitchen, or if you leave an open bag of potato chips in a common area overnight. Be wary, however, because any attempt to engage the Content Couch Potato in conversation (or even eye contact, in some extreme cases) will send it fleeing back into its native habitat faster than an antelope in lion country.

If you didn’t really identify with the description of an energetic child, this one might sound all too familiar. Unfortunately, just because your kid would happily spend 18 hours a day binge watching Ryan’s World (for toddlers) or Friends (for teenagers) on their iPads, doesn’t mean it’s healthy to let them do so.

Just like the energetic child, the Content Couch Potato is in need of healthy, physical activity. And so you must carefully take off your “mom” hat and put on your “personal trainer” hat.

The Job Description

In the “real world”^[7], a personal trainer has a few different tasks. The most common perception is that personal trainers are insanely fit people who are there to shame, scream, and motivate you into achieving the perfect six pack. As a personal trainer myself^[8], I can tell you this is far from the actual truth.

Step 1: Setting Client Goals

In real life, the first job of a personal trainer is to help you figure out your goals.

It’s actually quite rare that someone comes in actually knowing what their goals are, even if they think they do. A good trainer will take your ridiculous desires and rephrase them into achievable, realistic, and fulfilling goals that make sense in the real world.

For example, it isn’t uncommon for a relatively obese client to come in saying they want 15% body fat and washboard abs. This mildly delusional person probably doesn’t realize that 15% body fat makes you look quite unattractively anorexic (as a female) and washboard abs only happen if you eat like a rabbit and spend a ridiculous amount of time in the gym. With a few relatively insane exceptions, what a client who has this stated goal actually wants is to feel like they’re extremely fit, probably to go down a few jeans sizes, and be able to show off a stomach they aren’t ashamed of when bikini season rolls around.

While still challenging, this revised set of goals is completely attainable for most people (who are willing to work for it).

Step 2: Creating an Achievable Plan

After you have translated your client’s unrealistic goals into what they actually want, the next step of any personal trainer’s job is to create an action plan that takes their client from where they currently are to where they ideally want to be.

These plans obviously vary depending on what your clients goals are and what type of trainer you are, but there is a certain set of criteria that any good plan should satisfy:

●      A good plan is specific. In order to be actionable, a good training plan needs specific, measurable steps. It should be quick and easy to tell if each of the steps has been accomplished or not.

●      A good plan is ascending in difficulty, leading to the goal. You want to lead your client slowly from where they are to where they want to be. If someone comes to you weighing 250 pounds, it would be pretty inhumane to have them doing supersets of windsprints interspersed with 30 burpees a piece on their first day.^[9] You want to build gradually in a logical order.

●      A good plan is written down. Something about writing things down on paper is really powerful. First of all, writing a plan down means you officially have one and aren’t just winging it. However, there is a surprising amount of power in the act of physically writing down your goals on actual paper.^[10] Writing your goals or plans down enhances commitment, performance, and heightens the odds of actually achieving them. One of my favorite studies (The Yale Goal Study^[11]) showed that the 3% of Yale grads that, at the time of graduation, had specific written goals for their future accumulated more personal financial wealth than the other 97% of the graduating class. Money isn’t everything, but it definitely shows that something was working here.

●      A good plan is quantifiable. Many people talk about SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound). This model is basically a way of making sure people don’t set nebulous goals, but rather have goals where success can be measured, quantified, and tracked. Saying “I want to be skinny” isn’t a lot to go by. When do you qualify as “skinny”? How fast do you want to get there? On the other hand, “I want to lose 2 pounds a week until I have a BMI of 20 (which is considered the lower end of the healthy range) is much easier to measure, track, and --ultimately-- achieve.

●      A good plan has a deadline. If you don’t know by when you need to accomplish your goal, it becomes perfectly acceptable for you to continuously delay, procrastinate, and (ultimately) never actually accomplish it. Oh I didn’t fail to lose the weight, I just haven’t lost it yet. No, honey. Put the donut down.

Step 3: Helping Your Client Follow the Plan

This is the hardest part because, on the whole, people suck at following up on stuff.^[12]

As a personal trainer, once you make a plan, your client is usually somewhere between nervously accepting and jump-for-joy excited about it...and then comes the first workout. Just like Mike Tyson’s famous quote that “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”, every client is okay with their plan until they start sweating.

Exercise, like so many other things in life, is only effective if it’s slightly uncomfortable, if it pushes you slightly (or severely) outside of your comfort zone. Some people find that “outside of their comfort zone” is really not all that fun of a place, and immediately start trying to jump ship on their plan when things get hard.

It’s a personal trainer’s job to calm these puny mortals down, remind them of their goals, find a way to make the workout bearable, and keep them on the pre-established path.

Personal Trainer, Parenting Edition

Now that you know the rough outline of what a real personal trainer does, we can now go through this basic job description and apply it to you and your kids.

Step 1: Setting Client Goals

First of all, it should be noted that your kids are probably not going to have fitness goals during quarantine.^[13] Unless they happen to be really into sports, then they probably don’t even consider their physical health but for the yearly doctor visit. As such, the physical fitness goals are going to come from you. At this point that’s okay. Right now you’re the one with the long-term, non-cheeto-based vision for your kids, so you’re allowed to run the show for the most part. (If this is still the case when they’re 30 we’ll revisit this topic.)

Your quarantine goals are going to vary for your kids based on whether your kids are of the Manic Tornado genus or whether you have some variety of the Content Couch Potato (there are many different species).

The Manic Tornado is going to require goals that include goals like making sure they have enough outlets for their energy to make them happy, ensure they get tired enough to get a good night’s sleep, and hopefully keep them from twitching so violently at the dinner table that they turn their macaroni and cheese into abstract wall art.

On the other hand, if you are dealing with a Content Couch Potato, your fitness goals are probably a little more mild. You probably have goals like ensuring they walk further than the refrigerator at least once a day, maintaining a basic level of physical fitness^[14], and trying to get them in the sun regularly enough that they don’t start to phosfluoresce in their darkened bedrooms.

Whatever your goals for them end up being, you should have some. By thinking this through on a conscious level (rather than just yelling “get up and do something” in your head over and over) you will have a much higher likelihood of enacting a positive outcome, both for them and for you.

Here are some good quarantine fitness goals for the Manic Tornado children:

●      To get at least three forms of physical exercise throughout the course of the day.

●      To have enough physical activity that they are tired enough to take a nap and/or go to bed on time.

●      To spend at least 30 minutes a day playing outside.

And here are some sample goals for the Content Couch Potatoes:

●      To do one active thing each day.

●      To get 30 minutes of physical activity at least three times a week.

●      To do one new activity per week (at least an hour).

Step 2: Creating an Achievable Plan

This is the part that normal, non-quarantined parents don’t usually have to do. Most schools have at least adequate physical education programs, and even if they don’t, your kids run around at recess, get some exercise walking between classes, and have other active things they do as they go about their normal lives.

We pandemic parents are not afforded that luxury.

So, with your goal in mind (as set in Step 1), try to create a pathway of baby steps that will lead to the achievement you have set as your endgame.

Just a warning, it’s often intimidating to see your endgame from where you start. If you have a teenager that never leaves their room, it might be hard to picture (or at least really, really funny to picture) them waking up each morning to go on a run.

Hence the importance of baby steps.

Each step of your plan should have a specific action, measurement, duration, and deadline. More importantly each step should be visible and achievable from where the previous one left off. Let’s take the example of getting your Content Couch Potato off their ice-cream-stained bum and to the point where they do one active thing a day, for at least 20 minutes.

To work this example, let’s use the planning framework we talked about back in a personal trainer’s job description.

●      A good plan is specific. You would immediately fire your trainer if you glanced over at their clipboard and saw the phrase “um, run...I guess?” and yet this is how many of us approach parenting. You can’t wing it, especially when it comes to getting a TV junkie off the tube and into athletic gear. Figure out what activities you’re going to suggest, whether they get a choice in it^[15], when it’s going to happen (yes, a specific time), and all the other specifics so they can’t procrastinate, blow you off, or hide behind nebulosity.

●      A good plan is ascending in difficulty, leading to the goal. Each of your steps should be slightly harder than the previous one, yet still totally achievable. If you want them to eventually do one active thing each day, maybe plan to start with one day on the first week, two days the second week, three the third, and so on.

●      A good plan is written down. Write. It. Down. Whip out those Gelly Rolls from middle school and make an actual written plan. Hang it on the fridge with the dirty pizza parlour magnet every home seems to have (yet no one actually knows where it comes from). Keep it in your face to remind you what to do.

●      A good plan is quantifiable. When goal setting for adults, everything should have a deadline. When you’re setting goals for your kids, everything needs both a deadline and a consequence. For example, we’re going to walk for 20 minutes sometime before the end of the day or we’ll do it instead of your nightly TV time.

Step 3: Helping Your Client Follow the Plan

This is the hardest part when you’re a parent wearing the hat of a personal trainer.

In the case of a real personal trainer, the client is actively choosing to pay them for their services. The client has chosen to shell out the cash for expensive sessions, so they have a certain amount of willingness and motivation to make the most of them. Not always a lot of motivation, but some.

When you’re a parent, you don’t have this luxury. Your “client” is an ungrateful little sloth who would quite happily watch unboxing videos on YouTube all day if you let them. You’ll experience a range of emotions from mild eye rolls^[16] to outright anger or defiance. Just knuckle under and remember this is why they pay you the big bucks. Oh wait...

We talked about this a little in the last part of Step 3, but the key here is that you need to incorporate an “or” into every action item. This is what happens if the action item doesn’t come to pass. It’s not a threat, just a logical consequence.

To put it into grown up terms, you probably wouldn’t hear your boss say “finish this report by 4pm or I’m going to murder you”^[17], but it would be completely on brand to hear “finish this report by 4pm or you’re going to have to stay late to get it done”. Find consequences for your kids that are just the logical extension of your action. Things like this:

●      If we don’t get our walk in today, we’ll go twice as far tomorrow.

●      If you don’t feel like going to go to the park before dinner, we’re going to do a YouTube workout video together before bed.

●      You can play with your iPad as soon as you’ve played outside for 30 minutes.

These aren’t meant to be punitive, simply ways to ensure the action gets completed.

Just be mindful not to set a consequence you aren’t 100% willing to enforce. Kids live to call your bluff, and if they catch you not following through on your consequences you can wave goodbye to any semblance of “street cred” you had. They’ll know if they resist hard enough they can crack you.

Tricks of the Trade

●      Small changes are more likely to work long-term than changes that are more drastic.

●      Kids like activities that you do together better than you delegating and then them doing it alone. This is especially true for the small ones, but don’t let the eye rolling fool you...the big ones like it too. Just not in front of witnesses.

●      Try to find activities they like rather than forcing them into activities you like (or you think they’ll like).

●      The more you involve your kids in the creation of a plan, the more excited they’ll be about it and the more they’ll adhere to it. The feeling of autonomy creates motivation!

●      Embrace small wins, stupid wins, or partial wins. (A win is a win.)

●      Consistency is key. If you can get them doing something for a few weeks, it’ll start to become second nature (or just less like dental surgery) between weeks 3 and 4.

●      The less effort you have to exert to change their behavior, the more likely they’ll feel like it’s a choice they intentionally made for themselves (and therefore the more likely they’ll want to continue being active even after you stop forcing them to do so).

In a Nutshell

Physical activity is necessary for your kid’s health whether your kiddo is way too hyper or way too content with inactivity. To act as a pandemic-era personal trainer, you need to define your goal for your kids’ fitness, create a plan, and then use logical and consistently-enforced consequences to ensure they follow the plan.

---

^[1] Galloway, J. (2006). Fit Kids, Smarter Kids. Meyer & Meyer Verlag.

^[2] Birat, A., Bourdier, P., Piponnier, E., Blazevich, A.J., Maciejewski, H., Duche, P., & Ratel, S. (2018). Metabolic and Fatigue Profiles Are Comparable Between Prepubertal Children and Well-Trained Adult Endurance Athletes, Frontiers in Physiology. Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2018.00387/full

^[3] Read: Incredibly inconvenient and occasionally the stuff of nightmares.

^[4] You. It’s usually you.

^[5] Does this sound like a true story to you? Interesting. I admit to nothing.

^[6] Bite me. Then let’s trade lives.

^[7] If such a thing even exists anymore.

^[8] I’m still certified, but no longer take clients due to the aforementioned overabundance of progeny.

^[9] Unless they happen to also be 6’ 8” and go by the name Lebron...

^[10] Brock, M. (2019). Write it down, watch it happen. Journal of College Admission, 242, 45-48.

^[11] MacLeod, L. (2012). Making SMART Goals Smarter. Physician Executive, 38(2), 68–72.

^[12] I don’t have an academic citation for this one, but can give you 32 years of anecdotal experience to back it up.

^[13] Insert joke about fit-ness entire bag of chips into my mouth here.

^[14] Read: Ensuring their muscles don’t atrophy from Netflix-related disuse.

^[15] They should totally get a choice in what they do, but I would not give them a choice in whether or not they do it. I usually recommend saying something like “we’re going to do something active together at noon. You can pick what we do if you have anything specific you feel like doing, but if you don’t care I can figure it out”.

^[16] Because, as any parent knows, eye rolling does actually qualify as an emotion.

^[17] I’ve been told this would be an HR violation.

LITERARY TITAN GOLD AWARD

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