Scheduling swimming around the demands of having kids...
Deema
Member
I’m a bit depressed and frustrated about not being able to fit swimming into my life lately. I have a 5 year old, a 3 year old and an 8 month old. When I just had the two kids I was able to train a few times per week and I did a 5k and a 10k, but now in the past year since getting pregnant I’ve only swam a handful of times.
My youngest is starting to need me less in the mornings and at bed time so I’m hoping to work some type of regular swim schedule back into my life. I’m sure there are others here with young kids or older kids that are busy with activities etc. What do your training schedules look like?
When I had only 2 kids I trained for my 10k on Tuesday/Thursday evening swims for 1 1/2 hours plus a long swim on Sundays. Now with 3 I think I’d feel bad leaving my husband on his own to put all 3 to bed so I might try to become a morning person and do 6am swims. For those of you that do morning swims how do you manage to fit the swim in and get the kids all ready for school/daycare etc. and still make it to work on time?
Comments
we've got two kids (4 and 2) and it was tough to swim when they were young. Would feel bad leaving my wife to do it all. Now that they are more manageable I swim from 5am - 7am twice a week and then once on the weekend. That way the kids sleep most of the time I'm out and it's the least impact on the family. I wouldn't be able to go in the evenings as it just gets crazy around the house. Good luck finding what works for you guys
We have four kids, now almost all grown up (23, 21, 18, 15). When they were younger, we (wife and I) managed our hobbies by ensuring the kids had mutual sports that they all did. Aikido, gymnastics, judo, swim team. Not all at once. Those were the sports over the years that were most accessible to our one-car family at whatever city we were stationed in at the time. All the kids did piano because we got a piano. That way the hobbies the wife and I had (her weight-lifting me swimming) we could do as the kids' sports and piano didn't take 6 days a week.
(We were lucky that the first swim team our youngest two joined, the coach was very supportive of the parents. In fact, he let me and another kid's mom swim with the team. It was great swimming the workouts with my girls!
We were never stationed near family so didn't have the benefit of grandparents watching them, so she and I simply deconflicted our workouts. It worked for us and the kids.
Good luck!
We're all just carbon, water, starlight, oxygen and dreams
I have found that training wise it is far easier for me to find less time per day, but more days over all if that makes sense.
Instead of 3 days a week for 90 minutes I train 5 days for 60. This has worked for me well doing 5 and 10ks. It also allows for me to train the morning and evening without being late to work or home to late.
Thanks for the input everyone! It gives me lots to think about. My long term strategy is to convince my husband to get an endless pool so that I can do the majority of my swimming at home. But that’ll take years to convince him and save up! For now I’ll try out morning swims vs. evenings and weekends and see what seems most manageable. I’m still on mat leave until September so I have some leeway to try things out before going back to work