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Soccer moms are awesome for the way they take large chunks of time out of their lives to help their children become more skilled, healthier and happier. Meanwhile, they tend to have very little time in their own lives for exercise. While they would love to do something like a bikini body workout (here’s a Kayla Itsines review), there is never any time.
There is an attractive chunk of time that you can use
If you spend a lot of time at your children’s sporting practice sessions, it’s actually an excellent opportunity to get some quality workout time in for yourself. Rather than simply sit on a bench and cheer your child on, you can do the job while working out yourself. It wouldn’t have to be like you were a cheerleader. Instead, you can do it as someone who understands the importance of staying fit. This would make you a great role model.
In the beginning, just try standing
It can take a little courage to get started at first. When everyone’s dead serious, sitting down to look at the game, you might feel that it would be bad form to simply get up to start working out. You’d make a spectacle of yourself. This is why you don’t need to start out with an all-out exercise routine. Instead, you simply need to get up and stand as you watch the game, perhaps slowly pacing back and forth. Standing alone can help you burn about 50 calories each hour. You can transition to other unobtrusive exercises over time.
Time for a walk
Once you’ve stood around and paced around a little bit, you will have had time to gauge the reactions of other parents around. If all seems well, you can try gently moving on to a brisk walk. Whatever you have — a track around the ground or simply a perimeter path, you should use it to speedwalk. As long as you don’t get in anyone’s way, you’ll do fine, and you will be doing wonders for your health.
Once you’re even more emboldened, jump rope
It can take a little courage to begin overt exercise in front of an unsuspecting crowd. You should find out before long how to go about it without sticking out too much. You don’t need to work out the entire time you’re there. You can sit with the other parents for a while, and get up for some rope skipping five minutes at a time.
What if you want something a little more exciting?
It can take a real commitment to fitness to stick to one exercise form for an hour or two. It can even get boring to use the jump rope for that long. If you want something a little more engaging and exciting, there are other exercise ideas to turn to. Tabata is one of those ideas.
If you’ve never heard of it, it’s a high-intensity interval training workout system that is often described as a cross between circuit training and CrossFit. Tabata can include nearly any kind of exercise — sprints, push-ups, squats and so on, but you don’t go on and on. Rather, you put in 20 seconds of a workout, followed by 10 seconds of rest, repeated over four or five minutes. With plenty of change going on, you’ll be engaged enough.
What if the other parents make fun of you?
It happens. Some people have to object when they see someone act in an independent way. When celebrity fitness trainer Erin Oprea decided to use the jump rope at her child’s sporting practice, the other parents there took to social media to make fun of her.
Gathering forces would be one good way to keep this from happening to you. People may feel that it’s easy to make fun of a lone person; making fun of even two people acting together can be harder. Roping in one other parent at the game is all you need to do to make sure that everyone leaves you alone. Before long, you will be sure to have lots of parents joining in. Then, it’ll be the parents who don’t work out who feel left out. Working out while watching a child’s game is a genius idea, after all.
About the Author
Samantha Miller has two kids, a 3 year old girl and a 5 year old son. She’s also extremely close to her sister’s kids who are a little older but basically an extension of her own kids! Sam writes about parenting topics for Mommy blogs, her writing being a therapeutic way to wind down after a busy day.