Physical Training for Little Partisans: Workouts to Do With Your Young Children

Introduction – Working Out is for Little Partisans Too!
Greetings, esteemed Partisan Brothers! I’ve been bouncing around a bit on the themes I’ve covered – mostly fitness-related, with a training story thrown in. Well, today, I have a special treat for the awesome American Partisan community: a post on physical training (PT) for kids. You see, adults aren’t the only people that should be working out. Aside from youth sports, there are super-productive activities a loving parent can do with even very young children to get them into a life of PT early. Obviously, exercise is a critical part of the fitness lifestyle, and there really is no reason why parents can’t include a solid workout program as a fixed part of good child-rearing. Being a fitness guy for my whole adult life, it was a sacred obligation and a no-brainer for me to have my own son get into exercise; in fact, I was actually quite anxious in waiting for my son to get to a suitable age and size so he could start exercising. Since then, exercise was and has continued to be a non-negotiable fixture of my young boy’s life. For parents that are not necessarily into exercise, or are into exercise but don’t know where to begin with PT for their kids, this post is for you! Why not have your kids get into realistic and productive exercise as early as possible in life?
In truth, by getting your children into exercise early in their lives, you are giving them an absolutely incredible and invaluable leg up on health and fitness that offers advantages both immediately, and over the long term. I can’t even count how many of my adult personal training clients lament the fact that they got into exercise so doggone late in life, and that lamentation is not misplaced. After realizing solid strength increases, improvements in quality of life, and seeing what is possible even at a later point in life, they quickly conclude that they could have been that much further along in strength and fitness even decades before, in some cases. The main point here is, there is just NO substitute for an early start to, and continued performance of, any kind of training, and this particularly applies in spades to PT (and really, any kind of physical training effort – not just exercise). A child that starts working out at the earliest possible age – I’d say around 3 years old – will be far stronger, faster, and more agile than all his/her peers, while also having the kind of elevated self-confidence that excellence in these basic physical skills brings. As an added plus, the child that works out will look great too, to lend to the self-confidence just mentioned; that jacked Little Partisan will be getting ALL the ladies when the time comes! And what parent doesn’t want to have a handsome kid? Finally, the physically fit child that decides to get into sports in their later childhood will absolutely CRUSH their opponents in that sport, performance-wise – another confidence-builder.
In sum, it’s time to consider how to institute a PT program in your kids’ lives! I’ve been working my son out since he was just shy of 3 years old, and several years later, he looks awesome and is damn strong; he’s going to give me a run for my money any day now LOL. The good news is, other Partisans can get in on the action too, and I’ll present the way in this post. 
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The Forever Fundamentals – Applying the American Partisan Workout Fundamentals to Children’s Workouts
One of the first challenges I had to deal with when formulating a workout for my son was how to present exercise to him in a format that didn’t demand much or really any technical explanation. I mean, understanding technical details on exercise form is critical for good execution, but at the stage of development of many 3 year-old’s, not much explaining is possible. So when it comes to toddlers/young children starting out a workout program, the exercise lineup is going to be one that is easy to execute, and that doesn’t need much technical detail. Also, the loads used by children will be rather light, at least at first. As your kids get older and the loads lifted become heavier (but never too heavy), it behooves the parent to refine the execution of exercises as much as the child can grasp in order to exercise safely, but in the beginning, it’s really just a matter of having your toddler simply imitate your demonstration of the exercise. The nice thing is, the execution of the exercises I introduce in this post should be as easy for a child to understand as it is for the parent reading this post; the exercises to be suggested here for your kids are super-basic, intuitive, natural, and functional everyday movements that don’t require very strict technique. I still do many of these exercises (or their derivatives) with my young son to this day.
Also, because of the more general, non-specific, multi-joint focus of these functional exercises for kids, as well as the light loading, you are avoiding some of the potential risks associated with more traditional exercises using iron weights. The conventional wisdom, probably still around, is that a child’s growth will be stunted by lifting weights; the idea here is that young bones that are still developing will grow less when they are subjected to the regular stress of heavy loads. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but why risk it? Children don’t need heavy loading anyway, and will benefit far more from lifting simple objects that are more awkward to handle than balanced iron weights. We’ll get into the methods of resistance/loading to use in your children’s strength training in just a bit.
All that said, the beautiful thing about working out your kids is that, once again, the American Partisan Workout Fundamentals that I painstakingly detailed over six posts in prior months are the basis for Little Partisan workouts as well. When it came time for me to create a workout program for my then-toddler son, I had to think it over for a bit, but the task was made easier by my application of the Fundamentals when deciding what I’d do with him. Specifically, I referred to American Partisan Workout Fundamentals, Concept #2: Push-Pull-Legs + Core-Grip-Neck to form the structure of his workout plan. This important Workout Fundamental requires that the Partisan interested in maximizing his overall physical capabilities should exercise in each of the general movement types that the body is capable of. Well, the same applies to Little Partisans! Parents on board with having their kids do PT will stay with the Push-Pull-Legs concept, with a generous portion of Core and Grip thrown in (Neck work is not a huge priority for toddlers/small children, in my opinion). Certain other Workout Fundamentals may also not apply very readily, but Push-Pull-Legs is truly fundamental, even for kids. So when the time came to put a workout program together for my toddler son, I stayed true to Workout Fundamental Concept #2 in order to create or use exercises that he could do without too much technical detail or the necessity for cues of any sort. The idea here is, “just go!”, with the movement being so intuitive, natural, and easily grasped, that even a toddler can jump in, feet first!
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Important Considerations for Undertaking a Little Partisan PT Program with Your Kids
Key Requirements of the Little Partisan PT Program

• Number of Workouts and Required Time per Week: Expect to do PT with your