Man, knowing and experiencing are 2 different things. I've always known September was a challenging month for parents with all the commitments that come from kids going back to school, and I've always been super empathetic to my clients in this month, so much so that I let it influence the programming we do (when life stress goes up, training stress goes down, so we do power endurance) to do my part to support their performance, BUT... experiencing all that goes into sending your child to school feels so much different.
All the:
• thinking
• planning
• stress
• preparation
• remembering
• forgetting
• holding your thoughts
• reasoning
• bartering
• bathroom stops
• disruptions
• missed naps
• wet clothes
• potty accidents
• pushback
• things not going as planned
• frustration
• grrr's
• almost blames
• actually blames
• apologies for blaming
• owning up
• independence
It takes a lot of energy. Wow! I've missed workouts and I've already stated I'm very empathetic with my clients, especially when they miss workouts, but c'mon, I'm the coach, who owns a fitness business and has a home gym. I "shouldn't" be missing workouts, yet I do. This is bananas.
So my daughter is in pre-school. They did this really cool thing in which they did transition days that were progressively longer to help the new kids acclimate. I thought this was brilliant, except that I didn't know it, and talk about a psyche, I thought I was getting all this time to do XY and Z. Nope! Just a lot of hullaboo's and disrupted days.
And then, I thought I would just drop her off and go on my merry way. Nope! Not without a lot of tears, and clinging that got worse each day and culminated with 25 minutes of standing out side being squeezed with a little bear hug full of velcro, only to have my wife tell me she topped it the next day with a full 30 minutes of crying, velcro, bear hugs.
And then, I put all my eggs in the basket of well, at least we can all reset when we get home with a nap time. Nope! The universe took naps away too! That's just cruel.
Well, I think the karma, from all my years of teasing, has had its fun for now as last week, Vivi ran into school without saying goodbye to my wife or I, and all seems a bit more normal now, though there's still no naps, except in the car and the nighttime routines are requiring major patience and loooonnnnnngggggg drawn out wind downs.
I think October will be better, even if my recent track record hasn't been very good, because when I look back on my 18 years of training clients, my exercise programming for busy adults aged 30-60, tends to challenge them more with hypertrophy training (the opposite of when people's muscles atrophy & shrink and they get bone skinny and weak) using rep ranges between 8-12 for this month and attendance & compliance are usually better. So optimism is high because if I can challenge my clients more in the gym, that means life stress is going down a little and if life stress is going down a little, all must be o.k. for the time being with kids and schools. Phew. I can breathe. For now.
Hopefully it's another good week for my little rain boot wearing, little girl and hopefully it's a good week for you as well.
Warmly,
Coach Mike
p.s. How about you Friend? How was your September and how's your October starting?
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