Tag Archives: healthy

Personal Training From Our 1 Year Old

01/21/2015 R.C. Liley 2 Comments

Gone are the days of Avery sitting idle as Going Mom and I workout. From sitting in a swing, to bouncing in her jumper, our baby turned toddler has transformed into our personal trainer.

Not long ago, we used to only be concerned with keeping Avery entertained as we worked through an exercise routine either inside or in the garage, but now she’s part of the action and helping to increase intensity! I still remember having her watch us from her swing as we sweat it out with a workout video.

Or bringing her to the garage for first time and how worried I was to do anything.

And for the longest time, she’s been happily (for the most part) bouncing in her jumper as we lift in the garage.

babies, parenting, family, workout, fitness — Eager to workout with Daddy!

But now, with her walking and wondering all over, she prefers to get in on the action when and where ever possible. My wife and I were doing a quick body-weight routine consisting of 50 seconds on, 10 seconds off working through squats, push-ups, lunges, and planks for a total of 4 rounds; making it 16 minutes total. Short but intense and perfect for those with limited access to equipment.

Apparently, Avery didn’t think it was intense enough and she made sure to let her Mommy know to work harder!

push-ups, workout, fitness, parenting — C’mon, faster, Mommy!!!

And I guess Kelley looked like she needed a little extra weight as she doing push-ups, so Avery helped increase the intensity by adding her own weight.

fitness, workout — I’d say this isn’t fun, but I”d be lying.

Of course, I think Avery went a little too far with the intensity at one point. I’m not sure, but something tells me Kelley would agree….

What? Having trouble, Mommy? Can I have milk soon?

This happened with the plank hold too, and Avery would venture over to me every now and then to check in. I think my wife got the worst of it though, but she ripped through the 16 minutes; “baby weight” and all!

In the garage, we just hit a milestone by removing the jumper to make room for a play yard/pen (really looks like a place for a dog) that Avery can move around in as we lift weights.

I even had a second of feeling sad since it’s bittersweet to take it out. Our little girl is growing too much! Common saying from parents, and I completely understand! But there wasn’t much time to sit and ponder on the past, Avery let me know it was dead lift day and I needed to take my weight belt (she advocates lifting safely) and get to it.

Here, dad, you'll need this. — Here, dad, you’ll need this.

She looks pretty content in her new ~~cage~~ play yard, right? She seriously loves playing with the weight belt, so I know as soon as I’m done, she gets it back. It’s a good relationship though, she behaves and helps motivate me to lift heavy and keep focused, and I give her my belt once I’m done. Instant happiness….

I’ve had this mini kettlebell for kids in my Amazon cart for too long, and now I have motivation to finally buy it. Soon, you’ll see our daughter swinging her very own kettlebell with mommy and daddy!

How cool is that?

Whether inside or out, Avery’s keeping her Mommy and Daddy in tip top shape around here. And why not? Shouldn’t all kids want to have their parents be healthy so they are healthy enough to go play and run around with them?

I might joke about Avery being our personal trainer, but in a way, all parents should have their children act as personal trainers in the sense that they should want to get and stay healthy for themselves and their kids. I don’t want to be one of the parents sitting on a bench as my kid runs around playing on the playground, I want to be out there playing too!

Please, if you can’t find being healthy and fit for yourself being reason enough, do it for your kids’ sake. From chasing them on the playground as toddlers, to playing sports when they’re older, to helping them move out of the house when they’re fully grown, parents need to be there for their kids, physically and mentally.

Going Mom and I choose a healthy, active lifestyle, and I hope you do or will too. As and aspiring personal trainer (when Avery is older), I’d love to offer tips/advice to anyone who is serious, free of charge. In fact, if just one person reaches out to me, I would do my best to help you achieve whatever goal it is you have in mind.

Don’t limit yourself by thinking you can’t do something. Stay positive, set your goal, and get to it! Just like you are what you eat, you are what you think too!

Do you workout with your kids?

Any fun exercises or stories you care to share?

What goals do you have for yourself and how are you working to get there?

Going Strong

Going Strong: A Playground HIIT Workout Routine

01/20/2015 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

How often to you bring your little ones to the playground? And how often does it interfere with your fitness goals? Although it might be a change from your normal workout routine, the playground offers plenty of equipment to create a quick, muscle-burning HIIT routine all while your kids run free.

Now that Avery is walking ~~like a champ~~ kind of good, I plan on taking her to playgrounds and activity centers a lot in the near and distant future. Last Sunday, Going Mom gave me free time as she played with Avery at home, so I took advantage of the nice weather (70 degrees and sunny!!) and went for a walk……with my 20lb weight vest.

My foot injury from a few months ago has come back because I started running and jumping on it before it healed all the way, so walking is the most I can do. I’ve been going back and forth on buying an indoor water rower like this one, but keep talking myself out of it. Not sure why since I’ve talked about it for years, but my wife is getting extremely tired of listening to me talk about it and says she’s about to just buy it herself.

Guess that would be hard to refuse. Think I should just “row” with it and buy the thing?

Back to the playground. On my lonesome walk with a 20lb vest and Ben Greenfield Fitness podcast playing, I ventured to a desolate playground at a nearby elementary school and figured I’d “play” a little to test things out for future Avery.

With my 20lb vest still on, I ended up doing this HIIT routine….

5 rounds of:

– Monkey Bar Chin-Ups x 5

– Parallel Bar Dips x 10

– Squats x 15

Rest 30 – 45 seconds between rounds.

And there you go, it took about 15 minutes to complete this full body workout.

I know I was alone and having a kid would make this a bit more challenging, but there’s always a way, and I’ll figure it out soon enough. Besides playgrounds, since the weather will turn bad again, I can’t wait to go to a trampoline park or indoor bounce house and play around with Avery there. Hopefully this darn foot is better soon……for the second time.

There are plenty of exercises you can do on playground equipment, and as the time passes, I will try more and share them with you here. The weight vest is optional, but as a stay-at-home dad, I’m probably already a minority to all of the at-home moms, so why not set myself further from “the pack” anyway?

Do you do workout routines on the playground?

Anywhere else that you’ve created workouts when with the kids?

Please share as I would love to hear and try them for myself!

Food, Life

Polyculture vs. Monoculture: How Is Your Food Grown?

01/06/2015 R.C. Liley Leave a comment

I used to think I was in the clear by sticking with whole fruits and vegetables instead of processed food, and felt I was providing my family with the best nutrition as a result. But, as it turns out, how produce is grown is something we should be weary of as well.

The great debate over GMO vs Non-GMO has its place here, but what I’m referring to is monoculture vs polyculture agriculture (that’s a lot of cultures!). This is something I never considered in the past, and only felt it necessary to buy organic for the common “dirty dozen” produce. But, after reading a post by Darya on the Summer Tomato blog on why she doesn’t eat bananas, I had to know more.

In her article, Darya leaves bananas off of her plate because they are something not standard here in the U.S. and she strives to source food locally by frequenting farmer’s markets. She goes into detail on how bananas arrive in our stores, and here’s a quote from the blog:

“Virtually all of the bananas sold in the US are grown in Latin Amercia by a handful of countries including Panama, Honduras and Costa Rica. In these places bananas are grown year round, are harvested while unripe, then shipped in special refrigerated compartments until they reach their destination weeks later. The fruit is then exposed to ethylene gas which causes it to ripen and turn their characteristic yellow (not their natural color when tree-ripened).”

As I found, after doing some digging on Google (Diggling?…. Gogging?), most of the produce we see in stores is grown in monocultures (growing one single species of crop in a wide area) which leaves the entire crop susceptible to disease. This could seriously affect a crop’s yield for a particular year since the disease can kill the entire crop in the area. Think of the Great Irish Potato Famine where the entire potato crop was wiped out and many people died because of their vast dependence on this one crop.

For polycultures, multiple crops are grown within the same area to mimic the natural ecosystem. A good example of polycultures are the heirloom produce items like tomatoes. The funky colors and shapes are a result of different tomato species. The advantages for polycultural over monocultural farming via Wikipedia are:

The diversity of crops avoids the susceptibility of monocultures to disease. For example, a study in China reported in Nature showed that planting several varieties of rice in the same field increased yields by 89%, largely because of a dramatic (94%) decrease in the incidence of disease, which made pesticides redundant.

The greater variety of crops provides habitat for more species, increasing local biodiversity. This is one example of reconciliation ecology, or accommodating biodiversity within human landscapes. It is also a function of a biological pest control program..

Both polyculture and monoculture can provide huge crop yields. Polyculture provides resistance to disease which aids in the decrease of pesticide use, production of diverse foods, stronger crops. Also, the variety of crops increases local biodiversity which improves pollination and more nutrients in the soil. Monoculture practices are very efficient and can bring higher crop yields as there is no competition from other rival species.

To me, polyculture farming is the best way to produce crops as it more closely resembles how plants grow in the natural world without farming.

Will this influx of new information make me swear off the aforementioned bananas and all other monocultural produce? Probably not, but now I’ll be more mindful of the items at the store and look for ways to buy more heirloom or polyculture fruits and veggies. I enjoy bananas (see my blog from the past for proof) and other produce too much to cut them out completely, but my consumption has dropped and even if not on the the EWA’s Dirty Dozen list, I choose organic for more reasons than just pesticide exposure.

No matter what this or that study shows on the safety of some of these foods grown under less-than-ideal conditions, I choose to make what I feel is a healthier choice for our small family, and Going Mom and Avery seem happy with my choices; here they are glowing radiantly helped, somewhat, by a non-gmo diet I’m sure!