Six Weeks With the Kids

The school gates close this week, and six weeks open up. If you're a parent, you already know the shape of it: no school run to anchor the morning, childcare to juggle, days that start early and sprawl, and the fear that the training you'd finally got consistent is about to fall off a cliff. Most parents don't choose to stop over the summer. They just lose the slot the gym used to live in, and by September it's "I'll get back into it once they're back at school."

The thing to understand is that it isn't the six weeks of missed sessions that undo you — it's what happens to the habit. Miss a fortnight and your fitness barely changes. But a routine left dormant for six weeks has to be rebuilt from scratch, and restarting is far harder than maintaining.

So the summer goal isn't to train as much as usual — that's not realistic with the kids off, and pretending otherwise just sets you up to fail by week two. The goal is to keep the thread unbroken. Two sessions a week, even one, is plenty to stay in the game; it's the zero that hurts. Get the early one in before the house wakes up, when no one needs you yet. Use the holiday classes while they're quiet. And widen what counts: a proper bike ride with the kids, a long walk up in the hills, a swim where you put in some lengths — it's all movement, and it all keeps the identity of someone who trains alive through a this stretch.

Reframe it. You're not trying to make progress this summer. You're protecting the progress you've already made, so that September is a continuation and not a reset. Drop to a holding pattern with no guilt, keep one or two anchors in the week, and enjoy the holidays.

If you'd like a plan that flexes around school holidays instead of breaking every time they come round, book a free, no-obligation 15-minute chat with Jeremy or Beth at crossfitchiltern.com — no hard sell, and most of us hadn't trained in years when we started.