Workouts With Littles – Practice Makes Progress

When I started working out regularly, I could barely crank out ten kneeling pushups. Now, I can regularly do 20 standard pushups (and maybe more if I’ve been keeping up with my upper body strength).

The idea of doing a headstand used to seem completely out of reach, but now I can get up into the correct position for a few seconds!

Practice

Makes

Progress

Yoga with Littles

Yoga isn’t for everyone. While I don’t subscribe to the original philosophies on which yoga was founded, I do believe in the improvements the physical poses can make on the body.

Kid’s Yoga Videos

I mentioned in “Working Out Amidst “Distractions” that I started my health journey with yoga and a stationary bike, but yoga is really what started it all. I found children’s yoga videos on YouTube that grabbed the attention of my littles and helped us all adopt active lifestyle habits.

For example, we would pick a story-based yoga exercise and follow along. I actually participated in these videos with my kids as well. At that point, I hadn’t found a routine for myself (besides occasionally riding a stationary bike), so I stood with my littles in mountain pose and tried not to wiggle in tree pose.

Even that little bit of movement with my littles made a big difference in my own health.

30 Days of Yoga Challenges

After I established a yoga routine with the littles, I found myself wanting to experience more than the simple poses we had been learning.

A friend of mine invited me to do a 30-day yoga challenge, and from that point on, I was HOOKED! There are plenty of great yoga videos out there, but my friend and I just chose to participate in the first challenge that popped up when we typed “30-day yoga challenge” into our search bar.

I LOVED that challenge. The first few days started simple enough, but I soon realized I was overconfident. Throughout this challenge, I was encouraged to stretch farther, hold poses longer and correct my breathing. Up until this challenge, I had never noticed how often I held my breath during a difficult exercise. I didn’t realize that I was breathing in when I should have been breathing out. The techniques I learned in yoga have been so fundamental for me in my fitness journey and I’ve been able to utilize many of them in other workouts that I attempt.

Cardio with Littles

Bike Riding

While I still use yoga as a regular part of my fitness routines, my bike riding has since come to a standstill.

However, in the beginning, our stationary bike really got me moving. Although I didn’t use the heavy resistance settings, I remember quite a few nights when my husband worked late and I would bike for an entire movie. Those weren’t the most intense workouts I’ve ever done, but they certainly got me moving, and as I like to say: anything is something!

10,000 Steps

Early in my fitness journey, I bought a generic fit watch. My only requirements in the search for this watch were that it had a pedometer and that it told me the correct time. For the cost of a family drive-thru experience, I had my very own light pink fitness watch.

In the first year of owning this watch, I wore it most days. I did my best to take 10,000 steps a day. Neighborhood walks became a regular part of our family’s routine, and I would find myself just jogging in place some days to make sure I moved enough.

For our older two children’s birthdays last year, we bought the kids their own fitness watches in the hopes it would encourage them to start moving. My son loved his blue fitness and quite literally ran circles around me.

I don’t use my watch anymore, mainly because after two years of using such a basic, inexpensive watch, it’s fallen apart.

Hmmmm… perhaps it’s time for a new purchase?

Weights with Littles

After the bike-riding, adding a fitness watch, and incorporating yoga, I started researching the best ways to build strength. I was not looking to have super-hero muscles, but I wanted to look toned and feel strong.

As I researched the best strengthening exercises, I realized that these would be the routines that stuck. I came up with a list of exercises in my head, how many I wanted to do of each, and I memorized (or sometimes wrote down) that list so that when I needed to stop to get someone a drink of water or intervene in a sibling quarrel, I could pick right back up where I left off.

Start Small!

When I started these workouts, I knew I had to start small. My early workouts looked something like this:

• 20 squats
• 20 lunges
• 20 calf raises
• 20 crunches

That’s it! But that decision to start small and stay consistent in a small thing helped me keep going.

Building Up Strength

To build strength, the first thing I did was to categorize the exercises into arms, abs, legs, and glutes and to find exercises that I felt fell into all those categories. From there, I split my days into arms/legs and abs/glutes, slowly increasing my reps for each exercise.

When some of the exercises (specifically for legs and glutes) began to lose difficulty, I added resistance bands. This made a significant difference in my glutes in particular.

My 10-pound weights are the latest addition to my strength-building routine. I use these specifically for my abs and arms.

My Current Favorites (and, perhaps, Fallbacks)

What I love about having a list of exercises in my head is that I can break it up so easily and just jump back in where I left off. I can also do many of these exercises standing or in different locations – which, as a parent, is extremely helpful.

This is my current go-to workout routine that I do several times a week.

• ABS
  • Crunches
  • Flat leg crunches
  • Reverse crunches
  • Heel taps
  • Plank
  • Side Planks
  • Dumbell side bends
  • Dumbell twists
• GLUTES
  • Donkey Kicks
  • Fire Hydrants
  • Dumbell glute bridges
• LEGS
  • Squats
  • Lunges
  • Calf raises
  • Side leg raises w/bands
  • Banded clamshells
• ARMS
  • pushups
  • bicep curls
  • tricep extensions
  • resistance band for triceps
  • tricep dips
  • arm circles (forwards & backward)

I’m a mom, so obviously, there are plenty of days when I’m not doing all of these things. But I do my best to pick two categories and work through as many of those routines in a day as I can.

On a good day, I’ll do 50 of all the arms/legs or abs/glutes exercises. In seasons when I have more time (especially in summer), I might get up to 100 of these exercises.

A reminder here: my routines have grown significantly since I started getting fit. In the beginning, I had less than half of these exercises on my mental list and I may have only done 20 of these routines.

In Summation…

My hope is that this post leaves you feeling encouraged and maybe a little more empowered to further your own health journey. Life with littles is hard, but the fitness element is still possible!

How has YOUR health journey grown over the years?

Where did you start and where are you now?