Being an Example to Your Kids: The Strong Mom Series S14E4

Barbell Logic

How do you balance all your responsibilities and set a positive example for your kids? Bekah and Anna Marie discuss what they’ve found works for themselves and their clients.

It can feel impossible to train while maintaining your other responsibilities. Despite this feeling, training can help bolster your ability to uphold your other responsibilities. Capable, strong moms who regularly subject themselves to difficulty can better weather difficult times.

Training helps set an example for your children that choosing to struggle can help, shifting away the idea of body image and appearance to capability and strength, and you might hear your teenage son tell his friends “my mom can bench more than you.”

When you embrace voluntary hardship, you will likely find yourself gravitating toward others who act similarly. Beyond setting an example yourself, your children will see examples of your friends and acquaintances. Beyond benefiting your children, you will surround yourself with people who raise you up and make you want to be better.

You’ll see confidence and mental health benefits, as you realize you’re tougher than you thought. You and your children will see the benefit of individual and short term failure and how pushing beyond these failures leads to long-term success.

Making the mental shift to training can be difficult, so have awareness for what makes this easier and you can try some different strategies. Having a home gym helps tremendously, though you may find that you need to lift at a time when you know that your children won’t be around. Plan around your family schedule, knowing when it will be the easiest for you to train, and this might mean breaking up your workouts into smaller parts throughout the day or getting in what you can during the week and then having a longer workout or workouts on the weekend.

You may also want to reevaluate how you spend your time. You almost certainly are spending time on things that, if you think about them, matter less to you and provide less good than training to you and your family.

Finally, you can think about your “done list.” This is your to do list at the end of the day or week: what did you accomplish, and how will you feel looking at what you accomplished versus what you didn’t? Would it be better that you completed what you did if you didn’t train? Probably not.

Return to training if you stop: you can always come back, but when you’re training ensure you fit it in--even if the intensity or frequency or volume is lowered: do something. Lift.

#strongmoms #donelist

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