Your Guide to Using a Baby as Exercise Equipment

Whatever your reaction to the title was–a cringe, a laugh, a distorted expression of confusion–it’s safe to say many of us have a hard time getting to the gym regularly. If you have children, you can just about forget it. Taking care of the young ones is a full-time commitment, a rewarding and worthwhile one, but there will be sacrifices you need to make.

The good news is that there is some space to get a good workout in. We’ve all heard of bodyweight exercises before, you don’t need any equipment and can be mere feet away from your baby at any time. But sometimes we need those weights, the body just isn’t enough. Well, yeah, you can use your baby. As you’d expect, there’s a word of caution:

Note: Make sure you wait to do these exercises until your baby is ready for the action. Before you start tossing them around, they should be able to hold their neck up and sit up by themselves. In other words, don?t catapult a 6-week-old newborn like a cannonball.

In the article from The Art of Manliness, there are 6 delightfully illustrated exercises for you choose from. Go for a simple Baby Bicep Curl to the Baby Kettlebell Swing, combined with bodyweight exercises and you have yourself a full body workout routine you can do anywhere. And, as your baby gets older, your workout becomes all the more difficult. Time to bring the gym into the family.