#49 – Hey, Arnold

Young Kid hits the (home) gym as Old Dad tries to keep him from bulking up and growing up too fast

Old Dad stocked up on some workout equipment this past winter. The man cave and garage don’t exactly have an abundance of free space these days but in the long run, I thought 30-minute home workouts would be cheaper and much easier to pull off than 45-60-minute round trip runs to the local Y.

What I didn’t think about was how soon YK would want to become my workout partner.

As with most things involving 3.96-year-olds, there is give and take. The pros: More quality time spent with YK (and more breaks for his battle-weary mother!), an early reinforcement of the importance of exercise and self-care, and a chance for someone to say to me: “Wow, you’re really strong” with zero irony.

The cons: Uh, having a 3.96-year-old, and his 3.96-second attention span, around heavy workout equipment.

The first time went surprisingly well. YK joined me for my warmup stretches, then, as God is my witness, actually heeded my instructions and sat in one of the recliners while Daddy pumped some iron and offered rudimentary explanations of what I was doing. By the second time, though, his curiosity and itch for activity got the better of him, and he was lifting my medicine ball and the lightest of my adjustable dumbbell plates (“I’m really strong!”), digging through my stack of resistance bands, and trying to climb onto the stationary bike. Though I was heartened to see him pick up his putter and some golf balls, it didn’t exactly mesh with the weightlifting flow. And at one point, when I was doing reverse lunges, I had to holler at politely ask him to get out of the blessed way, as much to prevent him from getting stepped on as preventing me from dropping dumbbells onto my feet.

So I did what (old) dads of young kids do, and adjusted. Instead of focusing on what he couldn’t do in the gym, we focused on what he could. I hoisted him up and held him under the arms while he did (heavily assisted) pull-ups. I made sure he was utilizing proper form (or something approximating it) on his shoulder presses with the dumbbell plates. And though I politely (and repeatedly) declined his request to work in with me on my heavy row sets, I did let him recline on the padded bench while I did another exercise (“It’s so comfy.”). The most recent workouts have settled somewhere in the middle, where he shuttles between sitting and paying attention, jumping up and grabbing stuff or turning on the electric fireplace (because who doesn’t want to work out in a 75-degree room?) and leaving the room to grab a water bottle/stuffy/blanket or watch a show on Mommy’s laptop.

It’s an encouraging start, though, and one that’s reinforced my decision to have workout stuff in the house. Sure, he gets plenty of exercise playing outside, and his cardio levels still wildly surpass those of Old Dad, but he now understands that workouts are part of Daddy’s routine, even if he occasionally confuses “Are you going to work out?” with “Are you going to work?” And whenever I can combine things that I like and have liked to do by myself with activities that we can do together, I consider it a dad win.

Of course, it’s never that clean. Workouts currently are filed under the expanding category of “Things Young Kid Wants to do That he Doesn’t Yet Have the Knowledge and/or Physical Strength and Coordination to do.” This can and often does lead to frustration on his part and can extend OD’s workout time (without adding any reps) by 30 to 50 percent. Keeping his interest piqued, keeping him safe (I cannot believe he hasn’t pinched his fingers between the plates yet) and getting my workout done is quite the tightrope to walk. These workouts also bring to the surface one of the recurring themes in YK’s day-to-day: He wants to be an adult.

When we go to the park, he immediately beelines for the high school kids who are kicking a soccer ball around. When Mommy is cooking dinner in the kitchen, he immediately offers his assistance, such as it is. He is (and I’m hoping this is normal for kids his age?) oddly preoccupied with death and dying, and the bumbling, on-the-spot explanations Old Dad has offered on that topic are probably a post for another day. He is constantly looking forward to doing grown-upish things that I assure him he’ll be able to do one day, even if I can’t give him a concrete date for when one day will come.

And all I want to say is the same thing I tell him when he is pumping those 1.25-pound plates with his tiny little arms: Slow down, buddy. I don’t know where the first four years of his life went and something tells me the next four will fly by even faster. What I know and he doesn’t is that he’ll have the vast majority of his life to be an adult, to pay taxes and deal with leaky faucets and irritating co-workers and rush-hour traffic. He doesn’t know that when he gets to be my age, he won’t work out because it’s fun or because he wants to see how strong he can get but to keep his aching body from aching even more in the present and future, and to pump some endorphins into his body after a stressful day. He doesn’t know that right now, he’s living the simplest and sweetest part of his life, when he gets to play with his friends and get popsicles from his Nono and learn something every day hour.

Yes, buddy, someday you will be big enough to ride this bike and lift this barbell right over your head. You will pull off physical and mental feats that your old man never had the capacity to pull off and he will be so proud of you not for the feats but for being a person who wants to push himself, to grow, to try and fail and try again. You will work out with your Old Dad as he tries to stave off Father Time with curls and squats and situps, and you’ll wait for him to hit his second shot before you go to yours, 50 yards ahead of his in the fairway. All of this will come in due time, I promise. For now, please try to enjoy the present, all the perks that come with being a young kid, and having a body that you can strain and stretch and run all day and still be pain-free the next morning. And, uh, don’t try to lift that dumbbell. I don’t want to have to explain to you what a hernia is.