Welcome to Arbre Strength. Today we’re kicking off a series on creating a healthier home. This isn’t going to be about the latest and greatest non-toxic cleaning products or trendy carnivore diets.
We’re going to build out an actionable plan that ensures you and your spouse can get to the gym, eat dinner together, and spend quality time with each other. Did I mention the kids yet?
Although all of what we will be discussing will be applicable to any adult in a co-living situation, children are the variable that make everything a bit stickier – literally and figuratively.
For that reason, if you’re married with children, this is going to serve you the most.
Why Do Parents Avoid the Gym?
This one can really be boiled down to a single word if we wanted to make it that simple – TIME.
A lack of time is the number one reason parents do not get to the gym. It makes a whole lot of sense when viewed from 30,000 feet.
A lack of time can be because of household chores, your kids’ extracurricular events, cooking, or your career to name just a few.
Then there are other reasons like a lack of childcare – who’s going to watch the kids while you workout? If you have a newborn/infant this problem is extremely difficult to navigate, and especially for mothers.
There are more nefarious reasons like parental guilt. This could be self-imposed, or even sometimes stirred up by an unsupportive or maybe unknowing spouse.
Above all of that is the most simple of reasons, exhaustion. Sometimes when you factor in a lack of time, guilt, kids etc. you just do not have the energy.
All of these topics will be expanded upon at a different time because they all deserve their own attention, but I believe that with the help of your partner, you can navigate these obstacles that range from legitimate reasons to flat out excuses.
Regardless, they can all be overcome.
Shifting Your Perspective on What is “Enough” in Your Fitness Journey
Sometimes our perspective is distorted as it relates to what is required to take care of our health. We think it must be an everyday thing, when in reality, it can be taken care of in as little as 2-3 focused hours per week.
There are some people who talk about micro-workouts where they take 15 minutes a few times a day to Frankenstein together a full workout, but I am not here advocating for that.
Those small bouts of movement are something that you need in general to break up a sedentary lifestyle.
When we talk about moving the needle, we have to be realistic on where we’re trying to go and what that requires.
If you’re looking to lose weight, get stronger, slow the effects of aging, improve your metabolism, or anything else significant, you need 2-3 days (2 as an absolute floor) of dedicated exercise with an emphasis on progressive overload (gradually adding weight, reps, or sets over time.)
That is not something that you can necessarily accomplish from getting up a few times a day and doing body weight squats.
The plain and simple facts rest in the middle of the confusion:
You do not need to exercise every day to lose weight and get stronger
You need to do more than unstructured body weight movements to lose weight and get stronger
Lifting weight 2-3 x per week for a total of 2-3 hours per week is a highly effective way (when paired with a proper diet and low impact daily movement like walking) to lose weight and get stronger
So How Can Parents Get to the Gym 3 X Per Week Each?
We need to run the math on this one.
FYI, there are some factors that can reduce this time even more such as having a home gym set up or an in office gym that allows you to lift at work during lunch.
3 workouts per week x 45 mins - 1 hour = 2.25 hours - 3 hours
3 gym commutes per week x 10-15 mins each way = 1 - 1.5 hours
X 2 parents = 6.5 hours to 9 hours per week.
Now that might seem like a massive chunk of time, and maybe you even talked yourself out of ever getting healthy based on what you just read, but now comes time for the cold hard truth.
There’s a good chance that each parent spends almost twice as long watching TV or scrolling on their phone as it would take for both parents to workout three times per week.
No Time for the Gym? Audit Your Leisure Time First.
According to the 2025 American Time Use Survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, working parents with a child under 6 averaged about 9.6 hours of TV per week for dads, and 8.5 hours per week for moms.
That’s roughly 18 hours per household, and those figures only include time when watching TV was the main leisure activity they were engaged in. It doesn’t count the scrolling that happens in between everything else.
Both parents getting to the gym three times per week takes roughly 6.5 to 9 hours. That’s between a third and a half of what the average young family already spends in front of the TV
Needless to say, the average family has the time, they just aren’t making the time.
The Plan: How to Get to the Gym 3 x Per Week
Now let’s get to the reason why you showed up – here is the definitive plan on how you and your spouse can get to the gym three times per week.
And full disclosure, this does not dive into the meal plans/prep, cooking etc. because that will get its own article. It also doesn’t fully account for parents with twins, triplets, or some other scenario that makes it extremely difficult to leave your spouse alone – again, we will cover these topics separately one day.
For the purpose of this topic we are going to stick to actually getting to the gym and completing workouts for parents with kids who can be managed by a single parent for 1.5 hours at a time.
Run a Brutally Honest Time Audit
For one week (including weekends) write down every time you enter leisure time. This doesn’t mean checking your phone while you’re at work, instead we’re talking about when you sit down to watch TV, play video games, read a book, watch YouTube videos, or when you’re killing time in-between tasks during non-work hours.
Seriously, do it as it happens and write down your start and end times.
At the end of each day, categorize that time into 2 buckets:
Shared Leisure: watching a show with spouse or kids, calling family or friends, going to a sporting event etc.
Solo Leisure: watching TV alone, scrolling on your phone, reading alone, playing video games
At the end of your week of tracking, tally everything up. How many hours did you spend?
The goal would be to find the blocks of time that you can devote to your fitness within your solo leisure time. Your shared leisure is important, and your presence within it is important to your family.
However, no one is missing you when you watch TV alone, scroll on your phone, or play video games. These are areas you can carve out.
With an honest audit, you should be able to find 3.5 to 4.5 hours per week for each person.
Agree on Workout Days and Times
This might wind up being the most difficult part, but it is arguably the most important. You and your spouse need to determine which days and times each person will be working out.
My wife and I will alternate early mornings or late afternoons.
On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I will workout for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
On Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday she will workout for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
If it is an early morning workout we will try to be at the gym by 6:30 - 7:00 and be back by 7:45 - 8:15.
In our current situation we have 2 kids under 2 and very unpredictable sleep patterns so a later start to the morning is more sustainable. However, as our kids settle in and hopefully one day choose to go to bed earlier and sleep past 5am consistently, we will shift to an earlier start at the gym.
So on the days that one of us goes to the gym, the other parent gets up with the toddler, does breakfast, and then takes care of the infant (who is an angel and does choose to sleep later into the morning most days).
It is 1 - 1.5 hours of solo parenting. Of course mothers can do this with their eyes closed, but for Dads there can be a bit of a learning curve – you can do it though Dads, and you need to do it.
Optimize Transition Times
I’ve already denoted certain areas of this article as “arguably the most important”, but this time, this is actually arguably the most important – TRANSITION TIMES.
I played football my entire life (grade 2 through university) and one of the greatest things I ever learned was transition times. It’s what keeps everything on schedule and in order. Water break? Run to the water. Individual drills end? Run to the team period.
Your transition times will make or break you, and I mean that. Have you ever been running late, only to finally get out the door and then realize that you lost your keys? You just turned an already stressful moment into a nightmare. You turned running late into an undefinable kind of late, because you cannot find your damn keys.
And maybe you never lose your keys, but I bet you’re married to someone who does often. Type A and Type B people just seem to find each other after all.
Transition times are what will improve your chances of completing your 3 workouts per week.
So how do we optimize transition times?
Build a wrapper around each other's workout sessions
10 minutes BEFORE they’re supposed to leave, you take over with the kids, the transition starts BEFORE so they can leave on time
Lay out your clothes the night before
Regardless of whether or not you’re working out in the morning or at night, lay out your clothes so you’re ready to go
Hang up your keys and keep your gym pass with it every night
For the love of God, hang your keys up and know exactly where they are. If you lose your keys, which often also carries your gym pass, you are going to eat into your workout time and into the rest of your day.
Have Bottles/Food for Children Prepped
Make sure that the parent who will be staying with the kids has what they need to take care of those kids while the other parent is gone. Make sure you have clean bottles and milk ready to go.
Preparation breeds consistency when it comes to working out as an adult, and without preparation and team work, one parent or both parents will suffer.
What Happens When the Plan Breaks Down?
Sometimes kids get sick, parents get sick, or life just simply gets in the way. That’s understandable, and sometimes the plan has to shift after it breaks down.
I can’t just sit here and say that you need to do X, Y, or Z, because when one thing goes out of sync, the whole week can be put out of whack.
I would say that if someone gets sick and you can’t get to the gym, take the day off and do your best to make your next session happen.
If there’s some other life event that would still allow for a home bodyweight workout, go for it – that stimulus is still valuable. We will have some free resources on these “break glass in-case of emergency” workouts later.
Real life problems take precedence over your training, you just don’t want to use them as an excuse and completely fall off your routine after the problems have been resolved.
Recover, reconvene, and get back on course – one or 2 days off won’t make or break you if you get back to work and stay on track long term.
Everyone’s Situation is Different
I can only speak from the perspective of a couple who has two under two and zero grandparents within city limits.
My wife’s parents live on the opposite end of the continent and my parents live a 4 hour drive away in a different country.
That means that she and I have to collaborate in order for both of us to get to the gym. We can’t just drop our kids off because we do not have that level of familial community available.
With that being said, we both work from home, so we have advantages that other couples simply do not.
Chances are that you have an individual circumstance that can be viewed as a benefit for your household to become healthier and create a manageable weekly fitness routine.
Identify your advantages and disadvantages and plan with them in mind.
You’re a Team, Do it Together
The biggest take away in this article that you need to accept is that you have to do this together.
In order for everyone to get to where they’re trying to go, you need to collaborate with each other and make sure that no one is left behind. Both parties have to own the plan – this is not a dictatorship.
We haven’t even really talked about how powerful a marriage becomes when you become healthier together, but we’ll get to that later.
For the time being, you need to know that you can do it and it must be done together!
If you’re looking for guidance on how to get your health in order, be sure to reach out to the Arbre Strength team today. We help parents and people just like you get stronger, lose weight, and build healthier home systems every single day.
