Skipping Workouts

Missing a workout is not the end of the world. As a parent, there are going to be days when you simply can’t workout - a child wakes up when you are supposed to be working out, they are sick, or they won’t go to sleep at night. There are many reasons why you may have to skip a workout. While this is understandable, your goal should be to minimize these occurrences as best you can and not make them the reason that you never work out.

If you miss every single day of working out because of something that is coming up, then you’re not trying hard enough to find time to work out. There will always be an excuse to not work out - you’ll never have enough time if you look for reasons not to have the time. You stayed up too late with your child, you were up too many times, you have to clean the house, you have to make dinner, you’re too tired after taking your child at night, etc. Making excuses is easy - making the time and actually working out is hard.

That is not to say there aren’t legitimate reasons to skip workouts. However, you should be keeping those to a minimum (more than once a week is too many). If you find that you’re missing a lot of workouts, then it’s time to modify your strategy for working out - you need to shorten your work out, change when you do your workouts, or change where you do them (need to be at home vs outside or at the gym). If you have to completely skip workouts, then you need to figure out a better strategy for yourself.

If you find that time is your problem, then try to shorten your workout, but make it more intense. For example, instead of going out and running for 60 minutes, get a jump rope and do some skipping for 20 to 30 minutes, or else do some HIIT for 20 minutes. While it’s not the same, 20 minutes of intense training is absolutely better than 0 minutes of training. 0 minutes of training will not help you in any way.

If you have a goal that you’re trying to achieve with your workouts (for example, running a half marathon or competing in some other competition) then you may have to temporarily put those goals aside - put them out at a future date. A child, especially children under the age of 5, can really eat away at how much free time and energy that you have for working out. If you find that you’re skipping workouts a lot, then you may be setting your goal a bit too high at the current time - change your training to set you up for your goals a few years out if you need.

Don’t give up on working out completely. Modify your training, and if you do miss a workout, try to make it up at a different time. If your child woke up early, maybe they’ll take a nap later in the day or a longer nap than usual (fingers crossed). Try to work out then. If that doesn’t work, then increase how much you’re walking in the day. Add an extra walk in your day - the more you move, the better.

Not every workout has to be the best workout ever. If you have to sleep an extra 10 minutes in the morning and so your workout is 10 minute shorter, then do it. Work out as much as long as you can even if it’s shorter than you’d have liked. Any workout is better than no workout at all. Get in as much as you can.

If you find yourself skipping a lot of workouts, figure out a new schedule that will work for you. It takes dedication and commitment to workout on a regular basis, and it’s easy to make excuses not to workout. Figure out how to make it happen.