The busy mom’s doable weekly exercise plan

Time is a valuable commodity in the life of a mom running a bustling household. With a neverending to-do list, taking time to work out can easily get pushed to the side for the sake of a few more minutes of sleep, time with loved ones, or tasks around the house. 

Brittney Pearson, a personal trainer and founder of Healthy Catholic Moms, encourages mothers to shift that mindset and begin to prioritize their health and wellness in the midst of family life.

“We are whole beings with very real physical needs, spiritual needs, emotional needs, mental needs. My motivation for prioritizing health and wellness is that I have experienced how taking care of myself physically impacts all of these other areas,” Pearson explained. “I know I am less anxious when I have worked the stress physically out of my body.” 

Brittany emphasizes the importance of a mother’s vocation and believes a disservice is done to the mother and her family when proper care for the body is neglected. 

“We are leaders and not only are there people looking to us as examples, but they also deserve us to be functioning at our best,” she said. 

The good news for a mom with a packed schedule is that it doesn’t take a lot of time. 

“The reality is, a small amount of time spent with a very effective and streamlined workout gives you so much return on that investment,” she said.  

Brittany added that even a simple 20-minute strength workout gives energy. 

“Yes, it will be tough to get started, especially after a tough night with my 10-month-old,” she said, “but I’m after the effects. I need that energy to get me through the day.” 

Short term benefits like energy and a decrease in stress are huge benefits of working out, but Pearson encourages women to also think farther into the future. 

“Short, effective workouts can help us move better and for longer as we age,” she said. 

She shared that an elderly friend from church who serves friends with dementia, gets herself to Mass, visits her great-granddaughter, attributes her health to lifting weights every weekday. 

“We cannot control everything, but we do see, through research, that there are many things that we can do within our control to give us the best shot at a healthy life as we age,” Pearson said. 

How to get started

Are you shaking your head in agreement but struggling to see how you can realistically work out with all that is going on? Pearson, with five children to homeschool, understands the tension and has an entire website and podcast full of workout and nutrition tips, tricks, and support for moms, including during pregnancy and postpartum. 

For beginners, Brittany encourages mothers to work up to three 20-minute workout sessions a week, with walking interspersed. “Consistency matters much more than intensity,” Brittany said. 

Brittany recommends starting with either walking or strength training and adding in the other as the first habit is built. Walking is accessible because “you can do it with kids, you can even just pace your driveway or yard, and you don’t need to buy anything!” 

Strength training

If starting with strength training, Brittany says focus on full body workouts everyday if you have three days a week to workout, and to split into muscle groups if you plan to workout more than three days a week. 

A workout schedule for splitting muscle groups:  

• Day 1 – Upper body
• Day 2 – Lower body
• Day 3 – Full mobility day
• Day 4 – Upper body 
• Day 5 – Lower body 

For a full body workout, Brittany recommends doing at least one exercise for the following types of movement: squat, hip hinge, pull, and push. 

A sample full body workout itinerary:

• 10 goblet squats (squats where you hold a weight at your chest)
• 10 Romanian deadlifts
• Rest for a minute or two and repeat two more rounds. 
• After your rest, complete 10 banded rows and 10 floor presses.
• Again, rest for a minute or two and repeat two more rounds.
• Then, you can close it out with a few sets of planks, try Pallof press or a side plank. 

“The beauty of prioritizing strength training is that it’s absolutely possible to just get a set of six squats in, then grab a child a snack, and then come back and do another six squats, then read a few pages of a book,” Pearson said. “Is that ideal for most of us? Probably not, but it’s sometimes the reality and we need to live in the reality.” 

Life vs. exercise

Brittany cautions mothers not to look at their active life and pace as a mom and count that as workout time. She told about her personal day of going full speed with her five children, but her FitBit numbers did not reflect that perceived activity. 

“When we got home, I definitely felt like I had run a marathon! But in reality, I hadn’t gotten my heart rate up, I hadn’t lifted anything very heavy, sans a toddler or two. This is a problem because we can see through many studies that getting our heart rate up is important for our VO2max, which we may not care about now, but becomes important as we age, and we need to lift heavy things in order to build muscle mass, which we start losing each year beyond age 30,” Brittany explained. 

Brittany’s tips for getting in dedicated workout time with children underfoot:

• Remove decision fatigue and have workout videos loaded and ready for the week.
• Try to workout in the morning and avoid putting it off until the end of the day – that’s when you’ll really be exhausted!
• Let children who are interested workout alongside you, giving them age-appropriate supplies to use.
• Have a special box of toys for them taken out only during workout time.
• Be flexible – bring a workout band outside or to the playground to get a few sets in while they’re playing.
• Workout while they’re eating lunch and strapped in their highchairs.
• If a child is especially clingy say, “Mom will hold you after this set,” or “I can do that after with you, but Mommy is doing sets first.” 

Prioritizing health and wellness as a mom is challenging but the many benefits will be blessings to a woman’s life and that of her entire family.