So I hadn’t planned on making this my blog post this weekend, but I had no other choice. I hear from people all the time about exercise and not having time to get it in.
Yes, in today’s day and age, it is a challenge to fit in time to exercise. There’s no perfect time in the day, and everybody’s always exhausted. I get that, I do. I have two kids, a busy life and we chauffeur them everywhere they need to be, sometimes, with help, but they make everything even though my daughter plays AAA level hockey and my son plays three sports in the winter.
I just arrived at Beaconsfield Arena for my third sports rendezvous of this frigid Saturday morning. The coach of the team he got called up to play for demands he be at the arena an hour early to warm up properly, and I support that fully. Problem is, I then have an hour at an arena to do, essentially, nothing.
Unfortunately, I don’t do standing around real well, so I went outside looking for a way to get some exercise. Lo and behold, I came across Beaconsfield’s outdoor play structure/ exercise installation.
It was a great way to bang out some nervous energy and a wonderful way to get some extra upper body work done ahead of my training session in the late afternoon.
I did 200 pushups in sets of 25 and 200 one-legged squats in the same set fashion and finished it off with 100 tricep dips in sets of 10 on the parallel bars. I walked into the arena five minutes before the game started and wrote this piece on my laptop as I watched his West Island Knights peewee B game unfold in front of me.
It was fun, I didn’t waste a single second of a very valuable pre-holidays Saturday, and I got a workout in.
Now, parents, you can’t tell me that you haven’t ever dropped your kid off at hockey and stood around for an hour. Maybe it was more, or longer, but it’s always, always wasted time. Imagine, instead of wasting that time and complaining you had no time to get any exercise in, think about my experience, run up and down the stairs in the stands a few times, and boom! – you’ve got a great cardio and strength workout. You might even end up watching the game in a better frame of mind – and that’s the goal, isn’t it? Raise kids in a positive sporting atmosphere with parents setting a great example?
I have a friend who’s right all the time, but I think even she would admit I’m right on this one.