Training and family obligations/little sleep

hello all!

so my wife and i are expecting our first baby, to be born within the next 2 months (hooray!). my wife is very supportive and encouraging of my training, but i know that it won't be easy to train in the same way as we start playing with and taking care of our new baby. to add more to the mix, i had shingles two years ago (that sucked!), which i believe was the result of moderately intense MWF training, 11-12 hours/weekday of work+commute, and little sleep, maybe 6-6.5 hours average per weeknight (i'm pretty sure the lack of sleep was the culprit. nutrition was very good during this time). i'm anticipating that i'll be sleep deprived and will find it difficult to have regular large chunks of time throughout the week for training (i now do F7 M/Th and HS1 Tu/F)

i know there are several people on the forums that have a family to take care of, so i'm hoping that some of you can provide tips and advice on how to manage training alongside family obligations and/or while getting little sleep. plenty of you seem to have your kids playing or even training with you, which is awesome and what i hope to do as early as possible, but there will be the earlier period where our baby doesn't do much except eat, sleep and poop at the expense of mommy and daddy's comfy sleep. and besides family caretakers, i also know some of you are students with jobs, or people that are just busy in general, so any strategies on how to progress when things simply get busy, and especially when sufficient sleep is inconsistent, would be helpful.

thanks!

Hi

First of all congrats. I have an 8 month old son and I was so exhausted and stressed out that I didn't even workout for the first 2-3 months. Once I got the hang of the dad thing and my boy started sleeping better I slowly started exercising again, but to be honest I still only muster one day of training f7 a week and a little h1 mobility. I know this isn't ideal but I've actually made some of my best gains with this schedule. I m on mostly pe1s and pe2s but I was able to master a couple elements I was stuck on for months doing the 3 day spilt. The other days of the week when I'm playing with my son I gtg a lot of movements. When he is on tummy time I get down with him and do planks, abh,hollow body rocks and pushups.If I'm sitting with him while he's playing ill stretch my hamstrings or do straddle lifts or other im's. I can't even count how many of the sls movements and im's I've done and I get to do them all weighted progressively as he's gone from 8lbs to 21lbs! Hope these ideas help and good luck.

Phil

Congratulations

Not being a parent I'll leave it to others to advise you, other than suggesting that there is plenty of time to train when your priorities are a little less pressing

Also, growing child = natures progressive mobility weight. Just throwing that out there.

(NB; please do not windmill your child without a spotter minimum)

When pressed for time, make your workouts count. Ditch all the unnecessary rituals, keep warmup to a minimum and be aggressive. Depending on my mood and whether I've had coffee my workout lasts between 60-120 mins. Not faffing about really makes a difference in terms of time consumption.

On a larger scale, you may want to consider whether 12 hour days of work and commuting is sustainable in the long run, trying to raise a family.

PhilipP said:

Hi

First of all congrats. I have an 8 month old son and I was so exhausted and stressed out that I didn't even workout for the first 2-3 months. Once I got the hang of the dad thing and my boy started sleeping better I slowly started exercising again, but to be honest I still only muster one day of training f7 a week and a little h1 mobility. I know this isn't ideal but I've actually made some of my best gains with this schedule. I m on mostly pe1s and pe2s but I was able to master a couple elements I was stuck on for months doing the 3 day spilt. The other days of the week when I'm playing with my son I gtg a lot of movements. When he is on tummy time I get down with him and do planks, abh,hollow body rocks and pushups.If I'm sitting with him while he's playing ill stretch my hamstrings or do straddle lifts or other im's. I can't even count how many of the sls movements and im's I've done and I get to do them all weighted progressively as he's gone from 8lbs to 21lbs! Hope these ideas help and good luck.

Phil

this is all good and encouraging, and what i was envisioning i would do. i definitely understand not being able to do much in the first few months, so i'll play it by ear. even now, i naturally do planks and stretching while on the floor when with family at home to avoid sitting in a chair, so i'll be playing with our boy on the floor too. that's good to hear that you've made progress, though. hah, maybe i can master sls just by picking him up.

Jon Douglas said:

Congratulations

Not being a parent I'll leave it to others to advise you, other than suggesting that there is plenty of time to train when your priorities are a little less pressing

Also, growing child = natures progressive mobility weight. Just throwing that out there.

(NB; please do not windmill your child without a spotter minimum)

oh yea, of course there will always be time, and the first several months will be interesting to see how much energy is left to do anything else. despite other priorities, which will always be there, i just don't want to get in the cycle of excuses and telling myself i don't have the time/energy. luckily i'm somewhat young (26 years old), but if anything, i'm partially telling myself that training is a priority so that i'll have the strength and energy to play with my kids for as long as possible. 

Ravn said:

When pressed for time, make your workouts count. Ditch all the unnecessary rituals, keep warmup to a minimum and be aggressive. Depending on my mood and whether I've had coffee my workout lasts between 60-120 mins. Not faffing about really makes a difference in terms of time consumption.

 

On a larger scale, you may want to consider whether 12 hour days of work and commuting is sustainable in the long run, trying to raise a family.

i'm pretty good about avoiding any extraneous time-wasting during my workouts, but it's sometimes just the block of time commitment that's difficult now and will be even worse later. ah well. i'll keep all that in mind

and i forgot to mention that thankfully, i don't do that commute as often and it's much more manageable, because yes, 12 hours a day out of the house while trying raise my family isn't sustainable. 

anyway, thanks a bunch for the congrats and the responses, guys. i think i'm mostly just concerned about falling into the "i'm too tired/don't have the time" trap. while a lot of that is mental, i know i'll be actually just much more pressed for time and energy than i have before, and of course new priorities. my other thought has been to just do whatever i can whenever i can, even if it means just one or two F/H element(s) for 5-10 minutes while baby is napping or busy, and then doing another one or two elements as time becomes available later in the day. as much as i'd love to have a nice routine of m/tu/th/f, i don't want to not workout just because i can't follow an ideal schedule. i just have to remind myself that doing something, even if only one element for 5 minutes, is better than doing nothing. we'll see what happens!

k123 said:

hello all!

 

so my wife and i are expecting our first baby, to be born within the next 2 months (hooray!). my wife is very supportive and encouraging of my training, but i know that it won't be easy to train in the same way as we start playing with and taking care of our new baby. to add more to the mix, i had shingles two years ago (that sucked!), which i believe was the result of moderately intense MWF training, 11-12 hours/weekday of work+commute, and little sleep, maybe 6-6.5 hours average per weeknight (i'm pretty sure the lack of sleep was the culprit. nutrition was very good during this time). i'm anticipating that i'll be sleep deprived and will find it difficult to have regular large chunks of time throughout the week for training (i now do F7 M/Th and HS1 Tu/F)

 

i know there are several people on the forums that have a family to take care of, so i'm hoping that some of you can provide tips and advice on how to manage training alongside family obligations and/or while getting little sleep. plenty of you seem to have your kids playing or even training with you, which is awesome and what i hope to do as early as possible, but there will be the earlier period where our baby doesn't do much except eat, sleep and poop at the expense of mommy and daddy's comfy sleep. and besides family caretakers, i also know some of you are students with jobs, or people that are just busy in general, so any strategies on how to progress when things simply get busy, and especially when sufficient sleep is inconsistent, would be helpful.

 

thanks!

Hey man, I totally sympathize as I was in the same boat as you. My son is now two and things are quite a bit easier. 

At first you may not be able to train *at all* due to the sleep deprivation, but this doesn't usually last more than three or four months

Whatever you do, don't let it get to you. Things get better. 

Once you have a little time to train, I suggest:

Increase the density of your workout - like Ravn says, get rid of all the fluff and focus on the meat of F1 with zero rest between exercises. I would even go so far as skipping warm-ups if necessary. I used to be able to get my workout done in 30-40 minutes that way. 

Break the workouts into a three day split so that they don't take as long (40 min max). I used to be on the 4-day split and switched to the 3-day split three months ago with no change in my progress. Having a three day split gives me more flexibility to get my workouts in on busy weeks and also allows me to do a better job with H1 on less busy weeks. 

When you're at home, you can workout during your infant's nap-time (which is another reason to keep your workouts short). 

When you're working and only home in the evening, you can workout after your kid +/- wife go to bed so that you can be there for your wife and child when they're awake and need you.

That's all I can think of right now, feel free to ask more questions if you have any

I'm in the same boat as you as I'm expecting my first child in September. Thankfully my wife is as obsessed with her workouts as I am with mine, so hopefully we will make it work. But I do expect months of sleep deprivation and workouts getting missed, but I'm taking the long view in that I have years of training ahead of me and not to get too worried about it getting sidetracked for a few months. I have many friends who are endurance sport athletes who put many hours in every week and have small kids, so I'm confident it can be done if you want it to be.

Hopefully I won't have to eat my words in a few months .

The sleep deprivation varies. I've heard all the horror stories from friends about not sleeping for months on end, but with my kids there's never been any issues. Having three of them, I am probably lucky, but it goes to show that it doesn't have to be hell to have kids. Chin up!

Congrats! Having Children and see them grow up is the best thing in Life!

This period of time in Life is actually how I got started with GST. My Life was a mess (training wise), all I did was work and take care of the family. I thought I have to do something about it. So started with GST because that saved the time it takes to go to the gym. I did all my traing at home, this way my wife wouldn´t think that I snuck off to the gym. I was still at home and if help or whatever was needed I was there.

I also trained "throughout the day". I did a list of the exercises I wanted to have done by the end of the day. I took every oppertunity during the day. For example, waiting for the shower to get warm in the morning I would do dislocates and Pike stretches. I even did wall handstands at work.

So dont give up, there is Always time to train. It takes some discipline though but you´ll get used to it.

Congrats on the kid, hope everything goes smoothly for you. I'm severly sleep deprived at the moment, due to work commitments, moving house and not having a proper bed. My job is also detrimental to eating properly but that situation is improving. I haven't trained in about a month as I'm too exhausted but prior to this I did a two day schedule with 4 exercises one day and the other 3 on the other day, I actually made fairly good progress in this way for a month or two, just keeping your body doing something will go a long way to stopping you regresss. 

Hopefully things will settle down for me in the next week and I can get back to training correctly

thanks all for the congrats and advice. the general sentiment, and what i was planning on, seems to be to focus on our new baby until we all get into the swing of things and train as i'm able, but not to get too worried if things aren't perfect training-wise for some time. of course fitting in some exercise where i can will probably be better than doing nothing. more importantly, i can't wait to at least expose our new baby to the wonders of keeping oneself strong and healthy, though i'm sure he'll be able to demonstrate a lot of the mobility i'm having trouble with!