Inspiration and Wonder from My Time as a Personal Trainer

No, no one's hired me as a personal trainer. I decided I would help my son succeed in his first attempt at competing in an individual sport: cross country running in the Public School system. He's eight years old.

My son has always struggled physically. He's not physically handicapped but he has other emotional struggles that have limited him in the past. He has always lagged behind with his fine motor skills and is even surpassed by some things that his four-year old sister can do. As his father who loves him, I have fiercely tried to help him overcome these limitations.

He's active but not a "jock." He's not a sports-oriented kid by any means. He's played soccer and it was a struggle. Mostly he doesn't participate in the games and is overwhelmed by the whole thing, but he happened to be on three teams that won A or B-side trophies so he felt proud and happy about the experience. 

Cycling is something that got into him at an early age, long before his dad could even get on a bike, so it wasn't me who influenced him. He runs around a lot, but not for sustained periods. In fact, he used to skip or hop involuntarily after taking only a few strides while running. This slowed him down in his soccer games. His coordination has been very slow to develop but it's coming along.

Even as a fat kid I had a whole lot of fun playing unorganized sports when I was a kid. I was no jock either but I had fun. In a world where obesity seems like an unstoppable epidemic, I want to encourage my kids to embrace an active lifestyle for the rest of their lives.

I started my son training about a month or so before his first race. I put him on the treadmill at home which he's used before, but mostly because he's seen me using it. He'd walk fast and hop every few steps involuntarily. It was unnatural and a little bit concerning. He loved looking at the numbers and seeing how far and how fast he was going. That continued into our training.

I got him to jog at a speed that prevented him from hopping every few steps. The treadmill forced him to keep going in a continuous, fluid motion. His heart and lungs could more than keep up at that speed. Soon he was asking me if it was time to do his training each day. He made charts to put on the wall to track his progress and even set goals for himself. I'm so proud of him.

Quickly, the hopping disappeared and he was getting faster and faster, covering the 1.2 KM distance of the race. He started running 1.2 KM at 10 minutes and 40 seconds. As he progressed, he pushed himself further to beat his "record" times. And he did, shaving 30 seconds or more off when he tried hard. I told him that you try to shave one or two seconds off when you're doing this sort of thing but he proved me wrong time and time again.

His last training session on the treadmill came in at 6:12. When we started, I had hoped he'd get down to 7:30. In the qualifying race he came in 14th and got to go onto the final race of fifty kids. We never dreamed he'd do that well. In his final race he came in 23rd. We call him the 23 fastest eight year old in the city. Had he shaved another 20 seconds off, he'd be the fastest. It's been surreal, especially since the kid couldn't even run properly when we started.

Even now he doesn't hold his arms up in a punching like motion when he runs. Instead, he flails them around randomly. We worked on this a bit at the end and made some progress. But it illustrates how physical things don't come naturally to him.

So what have I learned?

It was an astonishingly wonderful gift to watch my son's body and technique improve the way it did in a few weeks. And it was hardly work for him. The kid barely broke a sweat. 

Even in the last week, I could see his heart and lungs getting undeniably stronger from the training he did the week before. He could do far more at the same breathing level than he did a few days earlier. An eight year old's body can repair itself and strengthen really fast. A night's sleep does the trick.

I've seen this progress in myself, measured by constant heart-rate monitoring. But to see it happen before your eyes in a person you love is beyond description.

It reinforces the notion that you are the master of your body. You can change your body and it is ready to change for you. 

Running, I hope, will be a part of my son's life until the day he dies. He needs it, not only to stay healthy physically, but for all the psychological benefits it will bring him as well.

My Eight-Year-Old Trainer Pushes Me Hard

My kids, like most these days, aren't big on getting off the couch and doing things. Even though we try not to hyper-parent or be overly protective, keeping them on a short leash, there still seems to be little that gets them out into the real world. But my eight-year-old son rarely says no to a bike ride with Daddy, even if it's clear across the city to visit Grandma. Even my four-year-old daughter joins us on the ride-a-long bike trailer sometimes. We did 90 minutes in the warm sun the other day.

My boy, who has always been slower to advance athletically compared to many of his peers, is pretty gung-ho to head out on a bike and pedal to the best of his ability. His ability used to lag behind my rapidly improving fitness level, but now his fitness is improving too (building muscles I presume) and he's pushing me. You wouldn't think we'd be a good match for workouts but I'm still a very overweight middle-aged-man and he's just beginning to blossom into a young athlete as he grows like a well-watered weed.

I don't know what affect our bike rides will have on the kids in the long term, or what they'll remember of it. I do know that I couldn't imagine my parents even going on so much as a walk with me, let alone a bike ride.

I refurbished an old mountain bike to compliment my road bike (hybrid). It's opened up the door to all sorts of new adventures and put at ease my anxiety over breaking a bike wheel again. However, mountain bikes are less efficient than road bikes and I have to work harder to keep up with the boy who won't slow down.

We also bought a deluxe bike rack for the car. This makes us officially a cycling family, like the happy, adventurous ones you see pulling up to bike shops or occasionally depicted in tourism commercials on TV.

It's such a far cry from the other stereotype I used to be.

Mention and You Shall Receive!

"We were dreaming this up and suddenly it's another new reality," my wife just said, as I was about to begin writing this blog post. Remarkably, we had the idea only a few days ago, really wanted to get one, and suddenly we have it and are using it. 

With many thanks to my friend Brian and his family who read my previous blog post about Tag-a-Long ride-on bike trailers. He had one he used for two years for his young son but it became a bit too wobbly so he gave it to us. His son is big enough to ride on his own now, and I happen to be handy, so it all worked out. Turns out all it needed was a large thin washer to fill in a tiny gap in the hitch to make it work well.

Don't be fooled by my daughter's apparent grim expression in the photo, she had a blast and would NOT let me stop. I had a personal trainer back there yelling, "Come on, Daddy, pedal! You can do it!" The little tramp wouldn't let me coast. And in spite of the trailer being a tad big for her 2-months-shy-of-four-year-old body, she could have gone all night and had no problem holding on.

Here are the questions I had before using a Tag-a-Long that I can now answer:

• Do you lose your balance? Not at all. Maybe it's because I'm so heavy and she so small, but it wasn't an issue. Once she wobbled back and forth on purpose and it was a bit annoying but there were no balance issues at all. 
• Is it harder to ride pulling it? A little, not much different than our sit-in bike trailer with the only difference being sometimes my daughter made up for the drag by pedalling. It was like there's a bit of a drag on your bike that varies. It varies because the child's pedalling varies. 
• Can you turn sharply? Yes, she even liked turns because it was thrilling.
• Is it hard to get started? Not really. The adult straddles their bike then the child sits on the trailer bike. Then you go. It's not that different than not having it and there were no issues.
• Does the child's pedalling help? I'd say yes. At brief moments she made up for her extra drag it seemed.

You have to do some extra breaking than normal when you're stopping but that's no big deal. It's tempting to want to go fast but if you crash, your child crashes. We went about 15 KM/hr.

I highly recommend these types of products. They're recommended for children between 4 and 9. But for practical purposes, most people only use them until their kids can ride a two-wheeler. By the time she's six or seven, I can't see her needing to use this. 

This unit costs $100 at Canadian Tire. Sport Chek has a slightly better one for $130. Other stores carry more expensive models but this one is just fine with the extra washer (so far.)

She was very proud of herself.

Tonight is the eve of my son's eighth birthday. He's an avid little cyclist now and I'm immensely proud of him. I think he's a bit jealous that his daddy-son bike trips now can include his baby sister. It's our thing, after all. But my wife and I felt bad doing family bike rides with my daughter sitting pretty in the other sit-in bike trailer. My daughter wants to ride badly with us but can't keep up, obviously. This is a great solution.

I'm very happy and so is my little girl, who has informed me we'll be hitting the streets first thing tomorrow.

My Children are Watching

My exercise spider.

My chatty seven year old son talks to me frequently about my exercise, diet and weight loss. He's told me a few times that I look smaller and tries to encourage me. He's not the least bit overweight but I find him quoting the nutritional information on food packaging now before HE eats it. It's obvious that what I'm doing is being noticed by my kids.

I didn't think my other child, a three year old girl named Amelia was noticing, but I was wrong. She sees me going to the gym and going for walks/jogs. I'm usually heading out the door for my evening walk when she's getting tucked into bed. Sometimes she blows me a kiss after I've left that is to find me out on the side walk.

One day a few weeks ago she presented me with a paper cutout spider that she made all on her own. She asked then that I take it with me to the gym. She hasn't forgotten. Every time I go for a walk or head to the gym she says, "Don't forget to take my spider with you."

It'd be easy for me to read much more into this than is actually there but I sense that my lifestyle changes are being very much noticed by my kids, in a weighty way.