Exercising with a 4-year-old

I can sympathize!

I find myself trying to squeeze in a little excercise during our daily stuff and it isn't easy to sustain any level of activity.

I've found that sneaking in exercise under the guise of doing something else works best for me.

For instance - Mo rides his bike and I run along beside him. We're really lucky that we have a lot of bike trails around here so I don't have to worry about cars much. There is a park about a quarter mile from our house so we mostly ride/jog there. When we get there we run the bases on the baseball diamond, that kind of stuff.

We also go wagoneering. Pulling him around in his wagon is great exercise because he is so heavy. Sometimes he likes to pull it along too so it's great exercise for him. Plus, we have a hand place to stash our found treasures.

We swim quite a bit (but right now that is an inside activity) and that is probably where I get the most exercise in. Catching a 50 pound boy over and over and over again is great fun for both of us and the water resistence adds a bit extra to the chasing games.

Gardening is probably our biggest exercise boon since we are digging up the yard.

I find exercising in a gym boring beyond belief so most of this suits me just fine. I can't wait til Mo is old enough to really do some hiking because I miss that so much.

Here in Munich, I am seeing quite a few mothers who do their shopping by bike, while their children sit in a trailer-like contraption behind the bike which is attached to the saddle pillar. (Is "saddle pillar" the correct word?) It isn't literally excercise, but it does get you a few miles on a daily basis. I don't know if this would work in Columbus -- American cities in general aren't precisely bike friendly -- but it might if you have a decent bike path between your home and your favorite shops, or if traffic is sufficiently light in between.

On a different note, I vaguely remember reading a Runner's World article by a mother who solved the problem by letting her child play in the garden and running 5-minute-loops around the block. That way the child could do its thing, and the mother could check on it every five minutes. As a nice add-on, on hot days the child would hand her out a cup of water every round. That way the mother stayed hydraded and the child felt needed. Again, not sure if that would work for you, but it might.

I see a lot of those bike-trailer combos in my neighbourhood and down in The Beach. Gets mom/dad exercise getting there, and the kids a place to sleep on the way back.



<I was even thinking of getting one for the canines>

4 years is old enough for her to hit some serious iron with you.

Squats, bench press, power cleans, you know what I'm saying.

If you hook her up with some GH(growth hormone) she could be seriously pumped up by the time she's this many(I'm holding up five fingers).

Buy a trampoline. With or without the netted sides. I used to have a ball on that thing. They are kind of expensive though. But you'll get a workout bouncing around with the lil one.

Inside- Get a dance aerobics DVD. The sozlette can dance and bop around with you. It might be fun!

I've been thinking of getting one of these:

WOW! The only had those stupid plastic seats that went on the back of mom's bike when I was little....

Is a trampoline too dangerous for her?

Or, what about something like this from Walmart.

I wonder if this could take an adults weight?

I just saw one of those bikes, boomer!! I wrote this thing, finished getting sozlet ready for preschool, went out to the car, and rounding the corner was one of those very bikes. I went OH!

I wonder how expensive?

I was thinking I'd go crazy trying to keep an eye on her but I just remembered I could get one of those little bike rear-view mirrors. We still wouldn't be able to talk, though. <visual -- sozlet waves to get my attention in the mirror, I crane my neck around, she's a bit slow in making her point, CRASH into a tree...>

I LOVE the jogging alongside while she rides her bike idea. That's just what I was going for, simple and intuitive but somehow I'd never thought of it. She needs to get a bit better at bike-riding first, but it holds a lot of promise.

She has a trampoline and she loves it -- for us to both be able to do it it would have to be huge and expensive.

Some sort of aerobics thing sounds fun, you're right! I have a probably irrational dislike -- I've always been a runner and to me that's the only proper exercise -- but that could work great.

The block thing is interesting, Thomas!! I could get a view of her from the other side of the block, too.

Our house is set up so that the kitchen, foyer, living room and dining room are all connected, so you can run around in a circle (diningroom-livingroom-foyer-kitchen-diningroom-livingroom...) We chase each other around that circle several times a day, one kind of doing laps though I worry about my knees because the angle is so steep.

I've been doing a lot of gardening, that is definitely exercise. Between raking up all the leaves in my yard, bagging them, and taking ten full yard bags up a flight of stairs, I got at least a couple visits to the gym worth of exercise.

I hate the gym and think it's boring but I like how controllable it is. Go in, do 2 miles at 6 MPH, do a round of weights, stretch, you're done. Nice and predictable and good for getting me where I want to go. Anything with the kid is start and stop and tangents and look at the butterfly and...

But I'm liking the running alongside thing a lot.

Are you a morning person, Soz? When my kids were little I would get up around 5:30 - 5:45 and be out the door by six. I'd walk 4 miles, be back by 7:00 and get the rest of the family up to start their day. Mr B was home, albeit asleep, in the case of an emergency and I got an hour of bliss. You can also get a couple sets of different weight dumbbells or resistance bands and do your strength training when you get home.

I have a 20-pound weight, should use it. Don't really know how. Slappy?

I'm super NOT a morning person, heh. Total night owl, it's a struggle for me to get to sleep before midnight. Hubby is too but needs less sleep than I do so usually wakes up first. (He needs 6-7 hours, I need 7.5-8.5 hrs.)

However, now that the sun is out longer I have been thinking of demanding an hour or whatever when he gets home for me to go out on a solo bike ride. Ahhh. That sounds nice.

I think I'll probably end up doing a combination of things, since part of the problem is that there doesn't seem to be anything that I can have any real control over except the gym (grr.) Like, what if it's raining, what if E.G. doesn't get home in time (the most likely what-if, he recently promised to be home by 7:30 every night and 7:45 was the closest he got before giving up and going back to the more usual 8/ 8:30/ 9...)

I love the running alongside idea.

The bikes with the trailers drive me crazy!!! There are several around here and they use them on the roads. I'm always scared to death passing them cause the child rides so low and could easily get hit with a thrown rock even when I'm passing.

It's not an outside thing, but I used to lay on my back, pull my knees up and give "rides" on my legs for exercise. Sozlet might be too big for that now, though.

I don't think there's much you're going to accomplish with a single 20lb weight. There are some things, but it would be hard to do a real "workout."

Try doing push-ups, either normal style, or "girl" style, which is on your knees, along with crunches.

Best thing is the gym...

Here are some things you can do at home without equipment of any kind:

Chest - Push-up (knee, regular, stairs, wall)
Back - Bird Dog, superman
Abs - crunches, lower pull, plank, bicycle, dozens more.
Shoulders -
Biceps -
Triceps - dips, seated overhead (you can try your 20 lbs for this, might be too heavy)
Hamstrings - hamstring leg lift, leg curls, one-leg curls,
Quads - squat, wall sit, lunges, standing raise
Calves - heel raise (on stairs), seated raise (use your 20 weight for this)
Butt - SQUEEZE lift, kick-ups, leg lift, wide squeeze
Inner Thigh - inner thigh leg raise, frog, plie
Outer Thigh - outer thigh leg raise, Doggie, pep leader

I dont have anything without equip for shoulders or biceps but a resistance band would help with those and would give you a lot more options for the other body areas as well. PM me if you want a source for descriptions of these exercises.

I've seen those bikes on e-bay for under $100 - since they have that "buy it now" option I imagine they could be found locally for about the same price when you include shipping.

My neighbor has one but she's not too crazy about it as she finds it hard to balance. Her husband loves it and I see him pedlig the kids around all of the time.