Exercising with Kids: How Family Rucking Builds Healthy Habits and Lasting Memories

0:00 If they see us being active, consistent, and enjoying movement, it sets a standard for what's normal in life. When they see us work hard, stay consistent, and make health a priority, they learn those values as well. Welcome to the Rucker's Edge podcast, a show all about rucking that is designed to help you develop a rucking routine, lose weight, and ultimately gain your strength and energy back. Whether you're an office worker with lower back pain, a fitness first -timer, or a new parent trying to get back to pre -kids weight, this is the show for you. I'm your host, Spencer, and thanks for tuning in today because today we're diving into something that goes beyond miles, weight, and pace. We're talking about exercising with our kids and why it's important.

0:49 One of our biggest jobs as parents is to be leaders for our children. One of the clearest ways to lead is through action, and our kids are always watching and listening to us. They pick up on our speech patterns, mannerisms, and habits, whether they are good or bad, unfortunately. It's so important to set good examples for them because this is how they learn and grow into the person that they will eventually become. I have a couple of children myself. If you have kids, you can probably relate to this, but preparing to be a parent, you read about what to expect or how to be a good parent. You even receive advice, solicited or unsolicited, about how to parent or what to expect. But for me, lessons I've learned through parenthood have been by going through it in the moment. I was always told and read that your kids are always watching.

1:47 So be the leader you would want if you were in their shoes. So that's a fundamental way of how I parent. The moment I realized that this parenting method was influencing my kid and molding them into their own person came when my oldest started saying complete sentences. Our family typically goes on a routine family walk around the block after we eat dinner. It helps with our digestion, and it's a good way to get out any remaining energy before starting our bedtime routine. Also, we just really enjoy saying hi to our neighbors and catching up. One fall evening, we came up to the corner house where the neighbor is almost always outside. He's either doing yard work or messing with his truck or sitting on a swing.

2:36 This was right about the time my daughter started saying, Complete sentences. We passed the neighbor before my wife or I could even say anything. Our kid was like, hey, how's it going? We hadn't taught her this skill at all. She just picked up on it on her own after the multiple times that we had made the block and said hey to this neighbor. That moment flipped a switch in my head. I realized all the things we were doing to show her how to be independent, manage her emotions, do things, etc. It was all working. We were in fact on track to raising the kid that we were hoping we were going to raise. I also realized that if she learned how to address familiar people without explicitly being taught, she's indirectly learning other things and is capable of building habits like eating healthy and being physically active as well. So let's talk about why exercising with kids matters. And we're going to talk about the benefits for kids and the benefits for us as parents. We'll start with the benefits for our kids, and I have five of them. The first one is we are role modeling healthy habits that they will hopefully pick up. If they see us being active, consistent, and enjoying movement, it sets a standard for what's normal in life. When they see us work hard, stay consistent, and make

4:06 health a priority, they learn those values as well. And it's kind of fun to see my oldest child be the one to suggest that we go on our family walk that evening. It's feedback telling us that our daily walking is already part of her routine, and she's building it into her life already. The second benefit for children is it teaches them discipline, grit, and resilience. Exercise gives kids chances to experience challenges safely. We'll say that five times fast. We're there to guide them through the challenge if they start to waver. And when the activity gets hard and they start to get uncomfortable, and maybe even the thought of quitting creeps in, we're there to encourage them and complete the challenge.

4:57 They learned that being uncomfortable doesn't mean quitting. It means pushing through and persevering. And lastly on this, discipline, grit, and resilience. These are all life lessons disguised as a fun workout. Benefit number three for kids is it builds confidence and self -belief. Every time a child finishes a challenging physical activity, it reinforces the idea that I can do hard things. The words we use matter, too, when we speak to them. When we say, you are strong. capable, and I believe in you, that becomes their inner voice. Another way I encourage self -confidence outside of exercising with them is by telling their mom or someone else that they respect that they accomplished the hard thing. You can almost see a twinkle in their eye as they get proud of themselves.

5:50 Okay, benefit number four. It provides moments of practical learning. Exercise naturally teaches math, you know, counting steps, tracking distance, timing. It also teaches science, physiology, anatomy, nutrition. It supplements what they're learning in school. An example of this is using pacing during a ruck. You can turn that into a fun game of problem solving. And the fifth benefit for kids is it encourages outdoor exploration and curiosity. This is my absolute favorite. Time outside introduces them to nature, bugs, animals, trails, even weather changes. It builds appreciation and respect for the outdoors. As an added bonus, it reduces screen time without a fight. Okay, so those were the benefits for kids, but what about the benefits for us as the parents? I have three benefits for parents here.

6:42 The first one is it's more quality time with our kids. I don't know about you, but the moment our first kid was born, it felt like time started to speed up. Months are feeling more like weeks, and years more like months now. It's so cliche, but yeah, the kids are growing up so fast. These workouts can double as bonding time. You can have conversations during this shared activity, and conversations during this exercise, like rucking or hiking, are different than conversations that happen at the dinner table. I find that kids are more likely to open up about things while doing a shared activity, like hiking or even doing a puzzle, something that's not physically active. But especially during an activity involving movement. It seems to lower their defenses and makes them more likely to open up. Also, I feel like it builds an emotional closeness. I don't know. I love having conversations with the kids while we're outside walking or playing on the playground or hanging out in the backyard on the swing. And during these moments, we're creating memories together. These moments will stick with you in them. Exercising together is way more meaningful than another night watching TV. Okay, the second benefit for parents is kids can motivate us too. So there's some mutual accountability.

8:06 Sometimes our kids are the ones getting us out the door for our nightly walks, like I mentioned before. And sometimes it's while we're in the middle of eating. I'll have half a plate of food left and find myself scarfing down the rest so that she can go outside and enjoy her walk. That shared accountability keeps both sides consistent. Kids and us as their parents. And finally, the third benefit for us parents is it's helping to build our legacy. And our legacy includes what values do we want them to remember us for? What traditions do we want them to carry on with their own kids? Exercise as a family can become a generational tradition, something your kids might one day pass down. and it creates stories that they can tell their kids about you. When your kids look back, they'll remember the moments you moved together, the lessons and grit and the belief you had in them. At least that's some of my fondest moments with my dad when I was a kid. I used to ride my bike with my dad on his daily run. It was a great time to talk about things I was struggling with at school. We explored nature together, had my first interaction with roadkill on those runs. They're core memories.

9:26 One of my favorites was learning that there's no such thing as a gummit. I'm not sure if this is a Southern thing, but if your family says dead gummit as an alternative to profanity. I remember on one of my runs, I asked my dad what a gummit was and he laughed. I couldn't understand why he was laughing, but he was laughing because it's just an expression. There's no such thing as a gummit. But I think my favorite core memory from those runs was... the encounter we had with a bobcat. As I mentioned, I would ride my bike alongside my dad or in front of my dad or behind my dad while he was running. And typically, I would ride out in front of my dad, not getting too far, just far enough that we could continue a conversation. But on this one day, I remember trying to go as fast as I could around this one corner. And when I came out the corner, I looked up and saw a large cat laying on a culvert near the edge of the bayou at the entrance of our subdivision. At first I thought I was just a big house cat, but the longer I looked at it, the more I recognized that it was way too big to be a house cat. And then I saw his tail and I was like, oh, maybe he got hit by a car or something. So I waited for my dad to catch up and I asked him about it. In that time waiting for my dad to catch up, I wasn't sure if we needed to avoid it. Do we turn around? Do we get away?

10:41 Do we just keep going? Do we call somebody? All these thoughts were going through my head. And when my dad caught up, I asked him. What is that thing? What do we do? Without breaking stride, he said, oh, yeah, that's just a bobcat and just kept running. And I was still standing still with my bike by my side. I stood there holding my bike, looking at it, and it was staring back at me. My dad continued to get further and further away from me, and I thought, you know, maybe it's time for me to go catch back up with him again. But I wouldn't have had that experience if I wasn't out there on my bike with my dad. I'm really glad that I went with him that day because... To this day, that has been the only bobcat I have ever seen in the wild. And I will never forget that moment and sharing it with my dad. All right, I want to take a quick break before providing some practical ways to start exercising with your kids to say thanks for listening to the podcast and to ask you to please consider sharing this episode with a friend that could benefit from this information. Sharing this episode would help the show grow and help more people develop and improve their wrecking goals. Okay, back to it. Alright, so we went over the benefits for both our kids and us for exercising together.

11:53 Let's go over the practical ways that we can exercise with our kids. And they're simple approaches. And before we get into it, I just want to say, start small. It doesn't have to be big. It doesn't have to be long. Just getting any moments with our kids and any sort of physical activity is going to be good. Okay, so here are some simple approaches. Like I mentioned before, we go on our nightly family walks. We love it. It's an excellent way to get even young children involved. And it's time to chill out at the end of the day. Another good one, weekend or weekday afternoon hikes in local trails and parks. Excellent way to get out in nature. Find some new animals.

12:33 Teach your kids what those animals are. Almost guaranteed core memories. Anytime you learn something, or at least in my experience, anytime I've learned something for the first time or experienced something for the first time, I will always remember it. Another simple approach is incorporating rucking. The kids can walk alongside you or they can ride a bike while you ruck. And then lastly, something that I've been doing is using child carriers for infants and toddlers. I have a recommended pack that I use, or recommended child carrier that I use. It's the Thule. sapling. It has a shade, so it protects your kid from the sun. We'll go out on rucks. We'll hit a local trail, and it's a blast. I have fun. Our kid has fun.

13:16 It's created a lot of fun memories. We turn it into sort of games. We'll collect flowers and leaves along the way to teach my kid about the local wildlife, trees, flowers, animals. And I think our favorite game to play is how many colors can we collect? We'll collect. all kinds of things out there like pink flowers from crape myrtles or purple flowers from crape myrtles, green grasses and leaves, brown leaves. I don't know. It's just been fun. Here are some tips and cautions though. First thing is keep it fun. This isn't training for them. It's about joy, bonding, and movement. Have fun with it. The other tip and caution I'll give you is respect their limits, their attention span, and their endurance. Be safe about it. Be mindful of the heat, sun exposure, and definitely monitor the hydration. All right, well, that's a wrap for today's episode. Here's a challenge for you.

14:12 Schedule just one family rec or walk this week and make a memory with your kids. I'm planning one right now for this Saturday morning. We're going to take the kids to the park and feed some ducks after a nice long walk. In next week's episode, we're going to do things a little bit differently. We're going to be introducing an interview format to the podcast. And Chris Hayes, the developer of the Rockwell app, is going to be our first guest. Really excited about it. We had a great conversation. I think you're going to really enjoy it. In the meantime, if you haven't already, please follow the show and share this episode with a friend that might find it helpful or interesting. As always, links to all the studies or products I've mentioned in this episode are provided in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to this week's episode of The Rocker's Edge.