At 58, I Am Fitter Than My Daughter

Today I discovered that I have more stamina than my 13 year old daughter. I went for a walk with my daughter, and encouraged her to slow jog with me. I found it very easy to hold this slow jog but quickly had to stop with her after only 500 metres. It turns out that she is very low on Vo2 Max and this was harder for her than I expected it to be. It really caught me by surprise, and tells me that something is wrong.

How did we get here?

Our kids have always been active. We have had them involved in gymnastics, soccer, swimming squad, and more. They have always had at least two activities a week in something physical. It’s just with this year starting with a bang, the house in pieces, and me building businesses, everything seemed too much. Add to this our impending trip to South America, and it was time to pull the plug on all of the external activities just to give my wife and I a chance to breathe.

At the moment, I run a building, am in the middle of renovating the house, and also in the process of building an online and a second, offline, business. So getting out with the kids to do something together is not happening as frequent as I would like it.

Most of the time I am in the house, it is work on the house itself or work on the computer as I build my businesses and study for the qualifications I need. So the kids either see me on the computer or I’m outside and out of mind. Plus anything that I am currently doing, such as movement and exercise normally happens in the morning before the kids wake and during my work away from home while at the building.

Clearly, getting out and doing physical things is necessary for kids, and it is certainly something I need to return to. Why don’t my kids spend more time in movement? Well, they spend a lot of time on screens. This is by design as they are homeschooled and we are teaching them computer skills, plus they have some of their downtime playing games with their friends. Their homeschooling, research and activities and gaming online can all add up to over 6 hours a day on the screen. Then, when they stop, they simply grab a book to read.

Since we stopped with the external activities life just started happening. Some things were deliberate, but getting the kids moving was one piece that slipped through the cracks. This recent jog demonstrates that. So I think the solution is me, needing to schedule one more thing, since if I don't schedule it I'll probably not do it, and with the kids' access to technology and personal activities, life will continue on until days or weeks have passed.

That’s why movement needs to be planned into their lives now. So now I have a plan to do get out more often with my girl, with the aim to help her get into great shape. What does this mean? It means that she reaches a level that I am happy with. Not olympic, but probably better than me. Heck, if I can get her out at least 3 times a week I will be happy.

So this is my public goal... to get my girl to move more.

It sounds simple, but if you have kids, then perhaps you will realise that it is not always easy. Plus, we have a family trip coming up and when you travel to other countries all normal routines get disrupted. So it will be interesting to see how much I can get them out and moving intentionally. There will be a lot of walking though, since travel always involves lots of walking... at least all of my travels do.

I’m interested, if you have kids, what are you doing  to get them moving?