Tag Archives: fit teens

Sunday Summary 13 November 2022

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Endurance Training Tips

High Performance Habits

14 Years Old

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I was looking through my phone to find pictures for our daughter’s birthday card.

In 2022, I noticed we’d hadn’t done much together, other than train and drive in my car!

13 proved to be a turning point.

When I pointed this out to her, and said I’d like her to join various family trips we have planned…

I could tell she had her own priorities and goals.

Not sure how much I’m going to see of her.

The plan, all along, has been to equip her with the skills for a self-directed life.

++

I’m finishing up a great book called Happy, by Derren Brown

One of my favorite insights is his observation… parents can’t help but pass their unrealized ambitions to their children.

I looked around:

  • An oldest daughter who swims (with an eye on the highest levels)
  • A son who wants to be a doctor

It’s a useful insight.

You can see it everywhere – my doctor pals have sons who want to be athletes!

++

Darren’s book goes further and talks about anti-ambition.

What we NEVER want to be.

I’m sure I’ve given them some of those!

The path to resist against.

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My next realization…

She’s done with me in 1,000 days.

I was 17 when I arrived at McGill University.

Hung with myself, mostly, for the next decade!

We’ve moved into the 1,000 day countdown for pretty-much-on-her-own.

++

So, what to do.

#1 – Congratulate her on becoming a wonderful young woman. She’s far exceeded my expectations, an absolute star.

#2 – Ask her what level of time commitment she thinks she should make to the family. What’s the minimum?

#3 – Continue to support her journey through the process of becoming an independent woman.

…and help her with the process of figuring out where she wants to take her life.

Sunday Summary 16 October 2022

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Top Threads

  1. Fast After 50 – Ironman
  2. Team “Feel The Byrn” in Sweden next June
  3. How to review an Ironman Bike File
  4. How to Qualify for Kona
  5. How to review an Ironman – more next Tuesday on Twitter

Endurance Sport Tips

High Performance Habits

Raising Fit Kids

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Towards a Self-Directed Life

They say we should teach about subjects where we don’t need notes.

Fit kids is that subject for me.

  • Our kids are 10, 11 and 14
  • We live in one of the fittest zip codes in America
  • Our kids are competitive in whatever they set their minds on
  • Most importantly, they are happy, engaged and a core part of every team they join
  • We’ve been raising them with intent, since before they were born

I threaded the outline for the video last Friday.

Winning means NOTHING if you lose the relationship.

Children carry an embedded option for the most common challenges of aging

  • something to do
  • someone to share experiences with
  • someone to love

Don’t blow it by being a bozo (at the game)

If the family has a special sport, swimming for us, then think in terms of minimum weekly frequency

None of our kids had to “be a swimmer” – all they needed to do was swim a little bit

Every. Single. Week.

Touch the water, once a week, since they could stand up

5-8 hours a week of jumping, climbing, twisting, spinning – All Summer Long

Very Consistently Undertrained

Our kids have done a lot since they were little.

What they have not done is specialize in a specific niche, or train like an adult.

I’ve also been careful to match my encouragement to the way the kid likes to train

  • Long days
  • Fast days
  • Mix of days

The kids decide what and how much – my role is to up-skill and keep it fun.

Ironman Finish – more than 11,000 days after I was born

10,000 Days

From the time a child stands up…

…to realizing their maximum adult potential

About 10,000 days

Longer in my case!

Several important realities flow from this timeline:

  • We control less than half of those days!
  • We don’t even control what we think we control – for example, effort at practice
  • It will not be the parents’ call – without a deep love of exercise, the kids are DONE as soon as they get out of the house, sometimes before!
The most important relationship in a child’s life is the quality of their parents’ marriage
Choose coaches, and mentors, based on the quality of their non-athletic lives

What Do We Control?

  • Modeling Personal Excellence
  • How our children see our marriage and other relationships
  • Sleep & Nutrition Habits
Spending my time, and giving my attention, to create a link between Fun and Work

Leave Room To Load Later

  • Middle School
  • High School
  • The Collegiate Level

None are a final destination!

Give the athlete somewhere to go when they leave you.

Being a badass breeds confidence – this impacts everything

Start With The End In Mind

Where do you want the athlete to be when they are done with their competitive career?

  • Resilient
  • Courageous
  • Persistent
  • Healthy
  • Enthusiastic

Use sport as a vehicle to teach these traits.

Start today!

Keep these traits front of mind when you’re tempted to make it about winning.

A teacher’s job is to fill the world with positive memories for the student to carry forward

Sunday Summary 9 October 2022

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Top Threads

  1. Training Update (Managing Fatigue & Coach Engagement)
  2. Data on 50+ at Ironman Hawaii, my speedy pals
  3. Zone 2 isn’t slow, bottom-up fitness
  4. Raising Fit Kids, blog & video tomorrow
  5. Athletes Overestimate Training Load Required for Health

Endurance Training Tips

High Performance Habits

Athletic Parents with Competitive Teen Athletes

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Way out on a weekday – discretionary time is a form of wealth – my son loves to train long, high & challenging

When you are “in it” with babies, preschoolers and toddlers… you might be dreaming of a better future.

The future will come…

…it’s going to be a whole-lot better than calming a cranky three-year old

…it’s going to be different than you expect

When our youngest started kindergarten, I had a vision of time coming back into my life, of life slowing down, of my personal trips returning…

Time came back, for a while.

With the shift to year-round athletics for our teen, the time is being allocated back out.

It’s the right thing to do.

I’m grateful for several things:

  1. I built a life that doesn’t require travel
  2. I have a low-friction routine for exercise (home gym, indoor trainer, live near hills & forests)
  3. I didn’t lock up capital in a secondary location (ski place, lake place, any place)

Travel – we get a lot done by being home.

Invert – life can feel unsustainable when one parent is away all the time.

Simplicity – we can hit our self-care minimums at home, or out the front door.

With capital, we tend to focus on money. That’s not the drain.

  1. Ownership (of anything) is another thing to take care of (share of mind, share of hassle)
  2. Athletic events are a new category of “things that take family time”
  • Time
  • Share of mind
  • Admin

…the more simple my day-to-day, the easier it is to focus on (family) goals.

Simplicity, in the rest of our lives, hopefully, makes this sustainable for us.

How To Build A Summer Training Program for Fit Teens and Athletic Kids

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“Yes, Sweetie, that’s me”

Last month, my daughter was asked:

Do you have a Dad?

In Boulder, that’s a loaded question.

She smiled and said, “Yes, I have a Dad.”

The question has come up before.

I stay invisible around my kids’ sports.

I do this with intention.

I want them…

  • to be INTERNALLY motivated
  • to keep our RELATIONSHIP separate from their athletic success, or otherwise
  • to INTERACT with them – I’m a player, not a spectator

Living in a town that places excessive glory on sport, my actions:

  1. Support Internal Motivation
  2. Lower Athletic Stakes
  3. Focus on Shared Experiences

My daughter put me in a bind when she asked me to coach her.

Top Five Hug, all-time, right there

Remember my advice to place the RELATIONSHIP ahead of performance

In January, we started a simple program – 20 minutes, done every Sunday, I’m not in the room

This went well – she loved it

For the summer, I asked myself…

What do we want to achieve?

  • For next season => get off the wall FAST
  • Over the next 1,000 days => set up capacity to go heavy at 16 yo

I came up with three 20-minute sessions per week:

  1. Continue the dryland program
  2. Street sprints
  3. Gym skill development & personal limiter mobility work

Let’s look at each

DRYLAND => keep what’s working, an all-around program she enjoys => good enough

Uphill is an effective place to coach speedy run form
AND
Bio-mechanically safer than other alternatives

SPRINTS => to get her off the wall FAST => choose an activity with close to max lower body recruitment

Uphill, street sprints – with casual walk downs

This tweet from Gerry explains more – it was a reminder of techniques we used in New Zealand.

Review & consider Gerry’s graphics – Hierarchy of Sports Performance and Motor Unit Recruitment

To set up the street sprints, she’s doing intramural track right now.

What’s your pleasure?
80#, 60# and 15#

SKILLS => with ~8 swims a week, street sprints and dryland… plenty of load.

A 1:1 session gives me a chance to assess her fatigue while teaching:

  • Squat Variations
  • Cleans (I have a 20# “kid” bar)
  • Sandbag Variations (I have a 15# “kid” bag)
  • Hip flexor openings
  • Eccentric rehab techniques

Let’s pull together the key points:

  • KEEP what works
    • maintain the sport-specific schedule from last summer
    • her load is increasing naturally by getting faster
    • she’s enjoying the 20-minute dryland from YouTube
  • Train general SKILLS – often missed at the sport-specific level
  • PICK ONE thing that would make a difference
  • RAMP LOAD GRADUALLY

Be patient – three summers until she’s 16.

As AC/DC remind us, it is a long way to the top (if you wanna to rock ‘n’ roll).

🤟