FRIDAY: Exercise
My husband Wade and my 10 year old have been exercising together for the past month. Wade wrote this post today about their experience:
About 1 month ago I noticed that my oldest son had stopped playing with one of his friends, so I asked him “why don’t you play with Fred anymore”.
“Cause sometimes he is mean to me” he reluctantly told me.
“How is he mean to you?”
“Some times he calls me names” His chin started to quiver and you could hear a crack in his voice that he saves for when he was on the verge of tears.
“What names does he call you?”
“He calls me unathletic.” He was almost in full blown tears.
Do you think you are unathletic?”
“Yes!” He said, And he began to sob.
I realized he was very fragile at the time and I thought I could go 2 ways; I could try to validate him and tell him he was athletic and try to build his self esteem through words, or I could try to help him realize you can choose to become what ever you want in life, and you can change, to a certain degree, anything you don’t like.
Do you want to become more athletic?” I asked
He stopped crying and said “Yes” Looking relieved.
We sat down at the table, and using some semblance of a scientific method, we took his problem and wrote it down. We developed a plan of doing a routine of Plyometrics, core exercises and some kick boxing 3 times per week and the other 3 days we spent playing a sport of his choice. We chose to rest on Sunday.
As our control to measure improvement we chose to run a set of ladders in the back yard and his maximum amount of push ups. His start time on ladders was 24.89 and he did 6 scraggly push ups. He then set goals to shave off 4 seconds on the ladder run and do 14 push ups and gave him self 1 month to affect the change.
During the execution of the plan we added push ups daily and occasional ladder practice runs. All the children participated in their own way and it became really fun as they all tried to best each others times in the ladder run.
After 1 month our reassess day was met with excitement as I think he realized he was stronger and faster than just a few weeks ago. As I wanted him to succeed I mowed the lawn to make the track faster and he put on his soccer cleats to help with traction on the grass.
He warmed up with Ketchup boy and flip flopper and they all dropped to do push-ups.
He pushed out 15 strong pushups and 5 more for good measure. We then went to the back yard and set up the ladder course. After 3 tries he bested his goal by more than ¾ of a second coming in at 20.02 seconds. He was beaming, smiling from ear to ear.
FRIDAY: Exercise
My husband Wade and my 10 year old have been exercising together for the past month. Wade wrote this post today about their experience:
“Cause sometimes he is mean to me” he reluctantly told me.
“How is he mean to you?”
“Some times he calls me names” His chin started to quiver and you could hear a crack in his voice that he saves for when he was on the verge of tears.
“What names does he call you?”
“He calls me unathletic.” He was almost in full blown tears.
Do you think you are unathletic?”
“Yes!” He said, And he began to sob.
I realized he was very fragile at the time and I thought I could go 2 ways; I could try to validate him and tell him he was athletic and try to build his self esteem through words, or I could try to help him realize you can choose to become what ever you want in life, and you can change, to a certain degree, anything you don’t like.
Do you want to become more athletic?” I asked
He stopped crying and said “Yes” Looking relieved.
We sat down at the table, and using some semblance of a scientific method, we took his problem and wrote it down. We developed a plan of doing a routine of Plyometrics, core exercises and some kick boxing 3 times per week and the other 3 days we spent playing a sport of his choice. We chose to rest on Sunday.
As our control to measure improvement we chose to run a set of ladders in the back yard and his maximum amount of push ups. His start time on ladders was 24.89 and he did 6 scraggly push ups. He then set goals to shave off 4 seconds on the ladder run and do 14 push ups and gave him self 1 month to affect the change.
During the execution of the plan we added push ups daily and occasional ladder practice runs. All the children participated in their own way and it became really fun as they all tried to best each others times in the ladder run.
After 1 month our reassess day was met with excitement as I think he realized he was stronger and faster than just a few weeks ago. As I wanted him to succeed I mowed the lawn to make the track faster and he put on his soccer cleats to help with traction on the grass.
He warmed up with Ketchup boy and flip flopper and they all dropped to do push-ups.
He pushed out 15 strong pushups and 5 more for good measure. We then went to the back yard and set up the ladder course. After 3 tries he bested his goal by more than ¾ of a second coming in at 20.02 seconds. He was beaming, smiling from ear to ear.