My Latest Family Workout
My kids are now 2 and 4.
As a parent, it’s been frustrating and disheartening to see how much adults push junk food on kids for the sake of profit.
It’s reached a point where exercise is a LIFE-ALTERING skill that all children should master as part of their education.
When it came to the long-time mistaken belief in “no knees over toes,” I decided I would dedicate my life to educating people on the actual benefits of knees over toes training, and never stop.
There is no “fail” or “succeed” — just the guarantee of educating more people on the truth.
The same now goes for teaching a family fitness system.
Thanks to junk food and diminishing physical activity, our kids need that system now more than ever.
My wife and I will include lunch CLASS at the school we’re creating, so the kids help make the food each day.
Our kids will develop exceptional SKILL at exercise and making real food without needing to be forced to exercise or follow restrictive diets.
These are the exercise steps we’re using, in order of importance and willingness, in my observation:
- Cardio Forward AND Backward (walking, running, sledding, and resisted treadmill = all valid!)
- Pull-up Progression (ideally balancing pull-ups and rows)
- Squat Mobility (ideally balancing ATG Split Squat and squat)
- Full Press (ideally balancing chest and shoulder pressing)
- L-Sit (all core methods are valid)
- Posterior (ideally balancing Nordic and back extension, but all posterior methods are valid)
- Flexibility Routine
- Optional Calf & Tib
My kids are already doing Steps 1–5, naturally, without being asked!
By the end of the 8-step learning process, you’ve got a thorough LONGEVITY exercise program for life — not just a kids program.
This is the same full program my parents are currently winning with!
My recent articles have been covering all these steps in great detail, and in the app I’ve been keeping the ATG Family Fitness Program up to date.
But in this article I want to give you a REAL look at my wife and kids applying the program.
Here’s what we all did this morning…
1 of 8: The kids naturally run forward. They also like to copy Alissa and me when we run backward. Alissa and I also love to SLED backward and use our backward treadmill, but we did this workout after traveling and then taking the kids to a playground. The way I see it, WALKING is already part of the ATG Family Fitness System, and walking/running/sledding/treadmilling only adds more benefit! Today, we used backward running.
2 of 8: The kids naturally HANG and CLIMB. Alissa and I do this as an exercise progression from hanging to holding the top to lowering down slowly to doing full reps.
3 of 8: The kids naturally have great SQUAT MOBILITY. This morning, Alissa and I worked on this with the ATG Split Squat. We’ve both earned our way to this being enjoyable and safe, but I’d like to remind you that it scales down to almost any starting level.
4 of 8: The kids naturally want to press medicine balls overhead. I like to use dumbbells. We didn’t train this step today, but Alissa did press one Sapphire overhead after their backward running.
5 of 8: The kids naturally work on a bent-knee L-Sit. Simply work from bent to straight and you have a lifetime of valuable core exercise on your hands! ANYTHING you enjoy is valid for ANY of these 8 steps, and for the core, I find the L-Sit wonderfully accessible and smooth as a progression for the whole family, so that’s what we use as our main choice for this step.
6 of 8: This step will take a little longer for my kids to directly work on, but they’re already very interested and active when we do it. Lowering down on a Nordic and doing back extensions are the two most accessible yet productive posterior strength options, in my experience. But again: All methods YOU ENJOY are valid for any of these categories.
7 of 8: Kids are naturally FLEXIBLE! I think this is a good next topic to break down. I’ve posted many flexibility routines over the years, and I’ll show our current routine in an upcoming article. The kids show interest but don’t “need” a flexibility routine yet. However, a GO-TO flexibility routine they can learn and use for life is a valuable skill I will gradually teach them.
8 of 8: The kids don’t show interest in calf and tibialis raises yet, and they don’t need to. But I’ve noticed a strong relationship between aging and the value of extra strength FROM THE GROUND UP, so I feel this is an important last category to teach my kids as I raise them to adulthood.
Thank you for following along today, and thank you for sharing and using the data to help those in your life!
I look forward to hearing about your experiences with the ATG Family Fitness System as I continue to work on it.
Yours in Solutions,
Ben
