| ...to raise a child is the famous saying. Well in the village of Newton Centre, Maeve's Brigade gathered for a family boot camp to raise awareness and support research for Type 1 Diabetes. Miss Maeve, was diagnosed a year ago, asked me if I could do a family boot camp to support her team and a year later, we made it happen.
This was our largest charity event and family boot camp ever with 43 sign ups and 41 participants. It was super fun to coach and it looked fun for the participants.
Why should you care?
Well, it's a cool video that takes less than 3 minutes to watch, so if you've got the time, give it a view.
It's also a concrete visual of being creative to find ways to combine getting your workout in and spending time with people who are important to you. There were so many different connections happening during that video: family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, members, clients, business, classmates, parents, kids, spouses, siblings, teammates, etc...
Everyone got 50 minutes of cardio + core work in. We warmed up for 15min and cooled down for 5min. We sprinted, planked, crawled, lunged, squatted, dead lifted, jumped, hopped, skipped and pushed. We went forwards, backwards, side-to-side, up & down and combinations of each. We had multiple levels so everyone could play and their were multiple ages, fitness levels, abilities present.
Maybe you're blessed and have training partners and/or a team to train with. Maybe you're great at prioritizing your self-care. Maybe you have the support to do your self-care.
Maybe you're life is in a good place to do self-care. Maybe you know what to do for self-care.
...but...sometimes you things don't always go as planned and you need to be creative.
sometimes you miss a workout and you need one badly, but it's family time, or you're visiting or traveling or something else.
what if you could get your workout in AND spend time with your people?
that's the takeaway from this email. Practice the habit of combining workouts with spending time with your people.
E.g. #1. Pre & Post Holiday Burn & Earns! Thanksgiving is coming up. You could run a Turkey 5 or 10k. Play football with family. Do a "Last Name" family walk after the meal. You could hit the gym in the morning. You could mesh family and clients together for a pre-turkey burn & earn like I do, then do the "Last Name" family walk with a football, after the meal.
E.g. #2. The Adventure Meal. When you go on a date or meet friends / colleagues / clients for dinner or take your family into the city, you could meet at one location for drinks, walk to another location for apps, walk to another for dinner, then walk to another for dessert and if need be walk to another for a night cap or an activity. Super dynamic & fun.
E.g. #3. Family Reunions! This one's easy. You plan activities for the whole day that can appeal to many. It can be as simple as bocce, can jam, corn hole, horseshoes, spike ball, ping pong, frisbee gold, soccer, volleyball, basketball, whiffle ball, squirt guns, water balloons, short running races and dancing. You can do a pre-reunion Burn & Earn or triathlon (swim, bike and run) or (strength / calisthenics, bike and run). You can do a post dinner "Last Name" Family Walk.
E.g. #4. Workouts on Vacation (not trips). Vacations are more relaxing whereas a trip is more of an adventure. Trips need a bit of focus on recovery because you're so active so stretching, yoga, foam rolling, massage and a bit of strength & conditioning maintenance depending on consumption and personal needs. Vacations in my mind are designed to return you back to your life better than when you left and if you agree, it should involve a lot of fun, rest, bonding time, making memories and working on your self-care. Pretty much everyone needs to always be working on their self-care, so you can find lots of buddies if you scale your workouts to their abilities. I've done hotel room workouts with my cousins using only super bands & valslides. I brought my TRX, super bands, foam roller and valslides on my honeymoon, so my bride and I could get workouts in. I've done family vacations at the beach where my mom, siblings and cousins all worked out at the same time doing the same thing (timed sets like 20:10's) and family vacations where different people joined me on different days for different activities (sprint day, strength day, stretch day).
E.g. #5. Bachelor Parties! Paintball, arm curls, deep sea fishing, swimming, beach & lawn sports, keg stands, flip cup, beirut and beer pong. O.K. maybe this was a bad example.
E.g. #6. Park, Play Dates & Swim Class! This is my life right now. We walk to the park. I follow my daughter around doing whatever she does. I bang out a few pull ups and stretch weird parts to embarrass my wife and then we climb stairs and run hills and play ice cream stand. On super fun days, I'll coordinate a meet up with a fellow park dad and we'll both do pull ups and chase around our daughters. Swim class is another walk to and from activity, followed by playing in the water and chasing my daughter around (counts as half time). This is most of my cardio right now. Also, speaking of parks, by the time you've read this I'll have completed the 4th meet up workout in the last 4 weeks (Carson Beach Workout, Cold Spring Park Run, Harvard Stadium Run and a Blue Hills Hike).
E.g. #7. The future: training with my family for my daughters sports! I sure hope my daughter loves sports because my wife and I will get to train with her for them. We can do all of the strength & conditioning drills and sports skills. She wants to practice agility drills on a ladder or with cones. Great we'll join her. She wants to shoot hoops. Great. I'll rebound. She wants to play baseball / softball. Great. We'll soft toss, play long toss, throw batting practice, play pickle, go to batting cages. She wants to play soccer. Great. We'll do all the soccer drills together. She wants to do a triathlon. Great. I'll do that too. Now, of course, she may not want to do these things with us, so I'll have extra time to work on self-care with the other parents in the stands, while we watch practice, but probably not games. Heck, I might even be the coach or assistant coach, so I can be active and connect.
So it takes a village to raise a child and sometimes involving the child helps raise the village. I hope you enjoyed the cool video of Maeve's Brigade Family Boot Camp and you found inspiration to practice the habit of combing your workouts with spending time with your people.
Mike Alves Burn & Earn!
p.p.s. can I help your self-care? if yes, reply and let me know.
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