5 tips for reconciling family, sport and work
Whether you are a business manager, manual worker, nurse, teacher, engineer or HR manager, sport and work rarely go well together. Difficult to reconcile family life, demanding work, minister's age and sports practice, our days are only 24 hours! And yet, having sports activities is essential to maintain your body and your mind. How to find this balance? Discover our 5 tips and advice, and rediscover the pleasure of achieving your goals.
Schedule your sessions
Balancing family, work and sport requires a great sense of organization. Family life and professional constraints can quickly overcome the greatest willpower. How do you find the time to do three running workouts per week and as much muscle strengthening in the gym when you are HR manager in a large company and a father or mother of two young children? Impossible, you will tell me! Not so sure. You can practice physical activity six to eight hours a week without harming your job or your family circumstances. The secret is to schedule your sessions.
Don't think it's simple. It is easy at the beginning to schedule three or four sports sessions of around twenty minutes but, very quickly, weariness takes over and you want more. There, the time factor becomes essential. Where to fit your sessions when you have to be at the office at one time and in front of school at another and finally at home before 7 p.m.? Think week by week. Take advantage of the Sunday afternoon nap or the few gaps in your schedule to schedule the moments when you are going to put on your pair of running shoes, do your yoga or run to the gym without forgetting to take the youngest to the pediatrician or enjoy a long-planned family trip.
Define your goals
To reconcile family, work and sport, it is also essential to be very clear about the goals you have set for yourself. It is obvious that goals such as escaping your daily life, improving your health and having fun are important, but they do not allow you to see the long term.
Ask yourself what goals you are pursuing in the short, medium and long term. Why do you want to run, take a yoga class, try trail running, cycle our roads or try bodybuilding? Do you want to beat your personal best, participate in a competition that is close to your heart, complete this extremely difficult course in a limited time or master this posture before summer? These desires will define your program and give a purpose to your sessions. They then become essential and you will have to explain it to those around you.
Communicate with those around you
Before you start scheduling your sessions, make your spouse or partner an ally. Tell him about the competitions you want to participate in and the organization you are planning for your sessions. See how to reconcile your activities and yours without forgetting the imperatives linked to work and children.
Communicating facilitates adaptation. It is essential to explain to your husband, your wife, and even your children why you have decided to run a marathon, cycle this criterium or undertake this triathlon. The family then makes common cause and will set up a new structure to facilitate your training over a limited period of time. It's up to you to return the favor when your competition is over.
Take action
Running, cycling, immersing yourself in your yoga session, hitting the course, lifting weights, at some point playing sports is just taking action. If you have established your program well, if you have discussed with your family what you are aiming for and how to achieve it, all you have to do is go ahead and enjoy your sessions.
Of course, achieving your goals when you practice your activity alone can be complicated, but you have to learn to rely only on yourself while waiting to find a friend or a group who shares the same desires. So, stop thinking and get started!
Stay flexible
Balancing family, sport and work requires a lot of flexibility. You have to be able to juggle countless variables and never forget that your schedule can quickly change, especially if you have young children. Scheduling your sessions weekly may sometimes not be enough. Identify the moments when you will be able to escape to take a breath of fresh air.
If you're a morning person, get up earlier, on the right foot, and go for a run or go to the weight room before leaving for work. This requires a bit of logistics, but is still possible if you have shower facilities on site or can return home.
It's impossible ? Schedule your sessions during your lunch break or in the evening. Remember that the most important thing is to achieve your goals. Add, if you wish, a session on the weekend, at a time when it does not harm your family life. Taking advantage of children's nap time is a great way to improve your performance, know that.
Doing sport is a real health benefit, but it is sometimes difficult to reconcile it with family life and professional life. However, you can achieve this by implementing a few simple tips. Combine communication, flexibility, action, programming and purpose and you will see that, ultimately, it can be simple to do it all.
And in the end, when it's possible, it's really great to do sports...all together! Running with baby in the stroller at first, which can become running with your children on a scooter then running with your children on a bike! Make them hit their first ball on a tennis court (without becoming a tyrannical father or mother like so many, please!) or take them to try handball, volleyball, rugby or football with you, go swimming all together at the swimming pool or at the ends of the earth during the holidays. The best way to combine personal and professional life, when possible, is to combine both, parents and children! We are always models for our children, let's be sports models to give them a taste for effort and physical expenditure, in addition to becoming a good person, and our training sessions which were solo before, will quickly become duo training sessions. less !
And then your children will always find an excuse to take our delicious Stimium® Boost and Stimium® Pro-Nrj gums "I can take a gum if I come running with you" ;-)!
