Three self-confessed ‘tiger mums’ reveal why they push their kids to exercise in lockdown
IF your children have been sleeping in, attached to their mobile phones and grunting at the thought of homework, they could be suffering from lockdown-itis.
But for some parents, quarantine is no excuse for their offspring to take their foot off the pedal. From homemade gyms to Zoom PT sessions, three self-confessed “tiger mums” reveal how they are pushing their kids in the pandemic.
Lara, 10, swimmer
EMMA NORTHMORE is a ballet teacher and founder of . She lives in Caterham, Surrey, with husband John Stone, 55, and kids Lara and Ethan, eight. Emma, 45, says:
"Every day at 6pm I get my daughter Lara into two wetsuits to keep her warm and take her out to the garden. She climbs into the 9ft above-ground pool we bought for £150 when lockdown began, then swims for 30-45 minutes.
That’s as well as three one-hour sessions a week with a personal trainer over Zoom, a couple of on-land training sessions with her swimming club, plus twice-weekly half-hour bike rides, runs or the rowing machine.
It might sound extreme, but time is precious and lockdown is a prime opportunity for extra training.
Swimming seriously since she was seven, Lara is number two in the county for 200m short-course backstroke.
Normally she’d train five days a week, and it’s our dream that one day she’ll compete in the Olympics.
When lockdown happened, she was just weeks away from a big meet.
I was sure it was going to be one of those magical moments where everything comes together, so I was devastated for her.
I also see this as an opportunity to close the gap.
We were late to realise she was good, so now we’re trying to catch up.
Lara doesn’t complain about getting in our pool, even though the water is so cold she needs a double layer, and I’ve had to make her gloves and socks out of an old wetsuit.
The real challenge has been the cardio.
If I do have to persuade her to train while her brother is playing Minecraft, it’ll be to do this.
She’s not a natural runner, and swimmers can find it painful compared to the pool.
In lockdown, it might be easy to cross the line from mum to coach, so the reason I got the personal trainer was so that she could have that role, not me.
It costs £40 per session but it’s worth it.
When Lara’s got sore muscles, I’m like, “Great! You’ve achieved something!”
I’m an internal tiger mum but I keep a check on it – I won’t shout, “You’ve got to win”, but I’ll try to put that impetus in her head.
I want her to succeed because she is talented and because she wants to, and I don’t want her to look back and say, “Why didn’t you make me work harder?”
Right now, in lockdown, I want to give her the best opportunities I can."
Isaac, 17, runner
ENGLISH teacher Lucy Hirshman, 53, lives in Valencia, Spain, with husband Kendall, 58, a teacher, son Isaac and daughter Cassia, 15. She says:
"I call my son Isaac “Forrest Gump” – he started long-distance running in his early teens, and hasn’t really stopped.
In the top ten in his age group in Spain, he runs the 3,000m and is trained by a former Olympic runner, José Antonio Redolat.
Lockdown couldn’t have come at a worse time for Isaac, but it wasn’t going to be an excuse to do nothing.
That would have wasted all his work – he was about to compete in the indoor track nationals, and had pushed himself so hard to qualify.
Here in Valencia, we’ve been on a total lockdown since March 14, with kids not allowed out of the house at all.
Normally, he runs 70km a week, so I knew he would go mental if he couldn’t keep up his training regime.
He was really annoyed at first and was tempted to break the rules – until people started getting fines for going outside.
Instead, every evening he started running a 60m lap around our garden repeatedly for around 30 minutes, which is about 6km.
To help him with his strength work, my husband and I decided to fashion a gym for him out of household items, using anything we could find in the garage.
His weights bar, which he uses for deadlifts, is a clothes rail with water bottles attached.
We used a wheel from a wheelbarrow to make an ab roller, and his pull-up bar is a scaffolding pole that we fixed across the entrance to the garage.
He also uses bags of cement and filled plastic bottles as weights.
When he first saw it all, he did think it looked a bit rubbish but then he started using it, and it has been great.
Now, Isaac will spend about 45-60 minutes a day on the equipment.
I never have to badger him as he’s really motivated.
He’s even set up a training session for his sister, running and skateboarding in the garden.
I’ll admit I’m quite pushy – I’m Isaac’s biggest fan, and when we watch him, I’m the annoying mum on the sidelines shouting.
I’ve always made sure he gets to training and we’ve paid a fortune in physios and podiatrists – around £1,000 a year.
He would say that I push him to a certain extent, but it’s a combination of my support and his determination that’s the key to his success.
Whatever it takes to keep him fit during this lockdown, then we will do it."
Anna, 14, ice skater
ANTONIA LAKE runs a craft store on website Etsy and lives in Cobham, Surrey, with her husband Richard, 55, and children Emily, 18, George, 17, and Anna. Antonia, 48, says:
"As I look out the kitchen window, I can see my daughter Anna twirling round and round as she practises her ice skating – on concrete.
Lockdown is tricky for any child who can’t train in their normal arena, and all my hopes of Anna keeping her skating going are resting on one small, foot-shaped £25 piece of nylon.
It works like a tiny rocker, which she can pivot on, and is now key to making sure her skating muscles don’t deteriorate.
Anna started skating aged ten and is currently training for her British Ice Skating NISA Level 2.
Normally she has one lesson a week – we get up at 6.30am on a Saturday for it – and several other practice sessions after school during the week.
The costs do add up. Each lesson is £24 and it’s £500 a year for rink membership, plus we shell out £200 a pop on costumes and up to £450 on skates too.
Ice-skating is a really competitive sport – and an expensive one – but it’s her dream to one day compete nationally.
As well as using the spinner for about half an hour every day, she does 35-minute off-ice training with a personal trainer and former skater on Zoom, focusing on strength, core, Pilates and keeping up the power and fitness for jumps.
Then Anna will do another half-hour of stretching.
She always does it willingly – unless it’s an early-morning Zoom class, in which case I’ll have to try to get her out of bed – and thankfully, at the moment it’s fine to juggle with schoolwork.
It’s the kind of sport where you need to put the hours in, and the more she does, the more I think she could do.
I push for it and encourage her as much as I can because it’s important for her to have a passion.
She loves it, and I wouldn’t want her to give up – but not at all costs.
Her mental health would always come first – it’s got to be fun, first and foremost.
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I’d call myself a realistic Tiger Mum.
That’s the thing that stops me saying to her, “Right, you are going to be the best”, because I see girls who are struggling mentally with the pressure that’s put on them.
At the moment, the most important thing is to help her keep as ice-fit as she can be, for when she eventually gets back on the rink."
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