This simple exercise routine can be done seven days a week, and only takes about 12 to 14 hours per day to complete.
Let’s start in the morning, the perfect time to get in a quick interval workout. If you are not familiar with interval training, let me explain. Interval training is a series of high intensity exercises interspersed with very brief periods of rest.
Here are the intervals:
Interval 1- Speed Shower
Rest- Brush teeth
Interval 2- Get everyone dressed, and serve them orange juice, milk, vitamins, and breakfast.
Rest- Stand up eating your own breakfast while continuing to take orders from your kids.
Interval 3- Get kids ready for school, including packing lunches, locating books, completing homework, and a short sprint to make it to the school bus on time.
Rest- The brief walk from the bus back to the house that would be relaxing, but during the walk you can hear your two youngest kids screaming at each other from inside the house.
Single arm lifts. This exercise is pretty simple. First, you pick up your screaming baby/toddler and carry her around all morning while doing a list of other things with your available hand; laundry, shopping, dishes. It is recommended you switch arms every 20 minutes or so, that way you’re are able to feel your extremities later on in the day.
Heavy lifting. A strange thing happens to my kids immediately after they eat lunch, their legs stop working. They turn into jellyfish. It must be a coincidence that this is precisely the same time I tell them it is time for nap. I scoop them up off the floor (remembering to lift with my legs!) and shuttle them up the stairs like sacks of potatoes.
Cardio: Next, it’s always good to get in a cardio workout during nap time. Depending on the season, this workout will rotate from pushing a lawn mower to raking leaves, to shoveling snow. Sweating profusely with an elevated heart rate is a great way to spend the only part of your day where you could potentially relax.
Final cardio session: This session usually takes about an hour, you continually run back and forth from the kitchen to other parts of the house to cook and then go breakup fights, see what cool Lego toys are being built, help with homework, and still manage to not burn dinner.
Speed drills: The phone rings, it’s your wife saying she’s on her way home from work. Start the timer, this exercise will take approximately 12 minutes to complete. Since you’ve spent all day with your kids as they moved from room to room slowly disassembling everything in each part of the house, it’s now time to pick it all up before mom gets home. You don’t want her to think you hang out in this filth all day do you? Of course not.
Cool Down: Like with any workout, the cool down is the best part. Usually this involves sitting with your kids reading them bedtime stories and talking with them about their day. A couple more trips up and down the stairs to find special blankets, fill up cups of water and you’re done! Just like that.
Now, it’s time to relax, until tomorrow when you get to do it all over again!
-Pete