Strength and Muscle as a Parent

What exercises seem to be especially useful

I have two kids under 7. This means I spend a lot of time lifting them, carrying them, buried under them, and otherwise having my physicality challenged by my kids. I figured I’d write up some of the physically most demanding things my kids try and make me do, and what exercises I do to make that easier¹.

Carrying a Child in your Arms

My kids love to be carried in my arms. Over Thanksgiving my two year old demanded that she be carried for a mile and a half in my arms on a family hike. Quite often my 6 year old wants me to carry his 50.2 pound body in my arms down the street. Carrying kids for long periods of time is one of the more frequently complained about parts of parenting. How do we get better at it?

Carrying a kid in your arms can be thought of as keeping your elbow bent at 90 degrees, so the kid can use your forearm as a chair. The bicep is the main muscle involved in this², performing an isometric hold. To make this easier, you want to strengthen your bicep in this specific position.

Doing isometric holds in the position would be optimal, but doing a curl variation is almost as good for strength in this position, plus gets you much better growth and strength in other positions too. Standing dumbbell curl is great for this, since the highest forces are at the angle you’re using to hold your kid.

Carrying a Child on your Shoulders

My kids like to live on my shoulders. If my son had his way, he’d ride my shoulders all the way to school (a mile long walk) every weekday. If my daughter had her way, she’d live on her mommy’s shoulders. While they’re on my shoulders they often drop things on the ground that I need to bend down and pick up³… while they’re still on my shoulders. This is a pain in the ass, but they love it. How do we get better at it?

Carrying a kid on your shoulders requires a strong core, quads and glutes. You need to keep yourself upright and you usually need to be able to crouch down at least somewhat to get the kid on and off. That’s a lot of different muscle groups.

This is why compound movements are great. Barbell squats hit all of these muscle groups in the right amounts. You want to do them with your feet apart, going as deep as possible, and keep your reps between 5 and 10. I’ve also started doing upright rows⁴ to get my shoulders⁵ strong enough to lift my son all the way over my head.

Opening a Pickle Jar

Not strictly a parenting task, but if you’re exercising a lot people will expect you to be strong. In my experience they’ll expect you to do two things, 1) open stuck containers, 2) lift heavy boxes. Lifting boxes is pretty straight forward, but opening up the pickle jar is trickier. How do we get better at it?

Opening a jar is a function of your forearm strength. You need to grip the jar tightly enough, and you need to be able to apply enough force. The weak link here is almost always your grip, so that’s what we need to fix.

I use wrist curls and wrist extensions. Take a small weight, lay your arms on a flat surface with your wrists hanging off, and do curls⁶ while only moving your wrists. Then flip your arms over and do palm down curls with the same weight⁷. Those motions should hit different parts of the forearms, making sure you can always open the pickle jar.

Final Note

You want to push the weights you use until they’re heavier than the kid you want to pickup and carry. Your 30 pound kid is heavier than a 30 pound weight⁸. You can’t grab your kid as easily, they squirm around and giggle, and otherwise are just harder to move. Dumbbells are barbells are designed to be as easy to lift as possible in order to more effectively train your muscles. When I want to train to be able to lift my 50.2 pound son, I use 225+ pound squats and 85+ pound upright rows.

1. This is just a few points. The full answer is do everything. Every muscle helps move your body in the unexpected way kids demand.

2. The front delt is also involved, but I won’t get into that here.

3. Usually a squat down, but if I want to show off I bend at the waist.

4. Using a dumbbell or barbell, hold the weight in front of you with your arms relaxed, and lift the weight straight up to at least shoulder level.

5. This is the side delt, totally different muscle than the front delt.

6. palm up

7. Doing two exercises like this, one right after the other, is called a superset. Supersets with two exercises that use different muscle groups are great for saving time in your workout.

8. Subjectively, not literally.