Parents are busy. We don’t have a lot of time to mess around.
We need to be efficient to stay in shape. To be efficient, you need a plan—and eating and an exercise plan.
Three Steps to a Fit and Functional Body
- Following John Tilden’s eating advice
- Following a movement-based exercise pattern
- Restructuring your thought patterns – limit and eliminate negative health and fitness beliefs, check out the Mental Mistakes on this site
For a great read on diet and health, check out Toxemia Explained. This is Tilden’s manifesto and it will cause you to think quite a bit about sickness.
Nothing complicated, not a ton of time, superior results. You should be able to run, jump, climb, and have fun. Self-imposed physical limitations are dishonorable—especially in first world countries. We have no excuse not to pursue our best.
The above three points are frameworks. When you work with a framework, you make the decision process easier and you can attain amazing results in as little as 1.5 hours of dedicated training time per week.
Here’s a sample:
- 3 sets of 10 swings
- 3 sets of 3 Turkish Get Up
- 2 sets of 10 Goblet Squats
- 1 set of 20 snatches, left/right
Not a lot of upper body work with this one but definitely full body. In another workout for the week, I would do something like:
- 5 sets of 5 chins and dips
- 3 sets of 8 Bodyweight row
- 3 sets of 8 hanging leg raise
- Finisher: 200 swings
Then that would be it for the week for strength and another workout would be more endurance focused: a jog, jumping rope, more movement-based (jumping, kicking, throwing). Each workout would be less than 30 minutes.
I don’t set aside specific time for stretching, but enjoy doing stretches randomly throughout the day, and especially at night when I do relaxed stretching.