With a family, it can be hard balancing training and your family life, but you don't actually need to separate the two. Even without any equipment, you can do very effective workouts with your children. Not only does this save time, but it will also help you build an even better relationship with your children.
If you just do straight sets, your child will soon lose interest. So I strongly recommend doing rest pause. Between sets, you only take 20 seconds rests. Not only does this make the rest between sets even shorter, but it makes the entire workout shorter whilst also still giving a really effective workout for building muscle.
Exercise 1: Quadriceps
First up, we'll be doing a quad exercise. Hold your child. Give them a very big hug. In my case, I'll be using a bench. You can do the exact same thing with a chair if you're at home doing this in a kitchen or in the living room or anywhere else.
Put one leg up on the bench or chair. We're going to do a variant of split squats called the Bulgarian split squat. Especially with leg exercises, you'll find that having a child of about 20 kilos is usually not enough for doing just regular bilateral exercises. But if you do unilateral exercises, so one leg at a time, you can really load up the muscles and still get a very effective workout using the lighter weight that is your child.
Exercise 2: Hamstrings
Next up is the hamstrings. So we're going to use the bench again. You can use a chair as well and we're going to do a single leg Romanian deadlift. So I'm going to put my leg up on the bench to stabilize ourselves and we're going to try and keep this front leg as straight as possible and bend down and back up.
Exercise 3: Chest
Next we’re doing a chest exercise and it's going to be my son's favorite one: the weighted pushup. Get your child to jump on your back, then start doing pushups. If that's not enough weight for you or you want to change into a different variant, you can do a deficit pushup, where you can get two chairs and you do the push ups at an incline between the two chairs, which will give you a larger range of motion and provide even more stimulus to your pecs. Alternatively, you can do a decline pushup and do what would be more like an incline bench press putting more load on your pectoralis major, the upper chest muscles.
Exercise 4: Back
Next up, we'll be training the back and we're going to be doing a pullover. The pullover is a very special exercise because you can change whether it places the load on the chest or the back just by thinking about which muscles you're using and engaging those muscles more. Place your upper back on the bench. You can use a chair, you can use a sofa, you can use anything. Lift up your child, but don't bend your elbows, otherwise it’ll work the triceps instead of the back.
Exercise 5: Shoulders
Next up, we'll be doing shoulders and we're doing another one of my son's favorite exercises, the shoulder press. If you have a high ceiling, you can do this standing up. For my son's safety, we're doing this with me kneeling down. It doesn't matter either way how you do it.
Exercise 6: Biceps
Next we're doing some biceps, so we're going to be doing some bicep curls. You’re going to hold your child much like a barbell. Now with this one, I actually recommend leaning forward a bit so you can put all the weight on your biceps. Make sure your child puts their head back. It'll keep them much more stable.
Exercise 7: Triceps
Next up is triceps, and that's these muscles here at the back of your arms. The exercise we'll be doing is the tricep extension. We’ll use a flat bench and we'll be doing something very similar to the pullover, except remember how I said in the pullover to not bend your elbow so much? This time, you want to lift your child by bending the elbows.
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I am Tokyo Titan, an internationally-certified bodybuilding specialist personal trainer and nutritionist. Using bodybuilding techniques, together we will create the body that you want in a short amount of time. Lessons are provided in three formats: online, in-person at my private gym in Ota-ku, Tokyo, a few minutes walk from Omori-machi Station on the Keikyu Line, and in-person at a convenient location of your choice. Customers can choose either lesson style or a combination of both to suit their preferences and schedule. As a bilingual Japanese native English speaker, I can provide lessons in either Japanese or English, allowing customers to train both their bodies and their language skills at the same time. For more information, inquire today!
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