Athletic training a breeze next to toddlers’ activity levels, studies show

Fall practice is underway at area high schools, and coaches are busily putting their players through rounds and rounds of exercises designed to get their teams into top condition for the grueling season ahead.

Two-a-day practice sessions, up-downs, jumping jacks and wind sprints, exercises to improve an athlete’s core fitness, strengthen their neck and stretch out the hamstrings will be part of every workout from now until Thanksgiving.

Experience shows that one of the primary keys to winning at any sport is to be in better condition than your opponent, and coaches the world over use that concept to motivate players into working just that much harder.

Science has shown that some muscle groups need special attention. There’s isometrics and plyometrics and a whole battery of exercises designed to make players faster and more explosive, and at the same time more injury resistant.

The most current emphasis is on core fitness – concentrating on developing the muscles and muscle groups that help keep the spine erect. If those muscle groups are strong and toned, it prevents a long list of injuries.

It’s how the modern athlete gets crafted these days.

And they’re all wimps.

It turns out that all the high-tech workouts and specialized exercises pale in comparison to the fitness of a toddler.

That should come as no surprise to new moms everywhere who already know that keeping up with a toddler is the most exhausting job in the world. Or to any first-time grandparent who has been wiped out by a small human being who can barely walk but still manages to go so fast and so far that they not only leave grandpa pooped but wear out the formerly inexhaustible family dog, leaving both panting and whimpering in the corner.

One study concluded that the average antics of your basic toddler would be the equivalent of an adult going 83 rounds (at 3 minutes per round) in a boxing ring. Speaking as someone who has put in a little time at a boxing gym, just three 3-minute rounds is enough to make the average person’s arms feel as if they’ve been made out of lead.

If boxing analogies aren’t for you, an adult would have to run 30 miles a day or cycle 83 miles at 12-to-14 miles per hour to keep up with a toddler.

If you prefer, it would be like an adult playing 300 minutes of competitive soccer – that would be more than three full-time matches back-to-back-to-back.

And the truly amazing thing? Toddlers do all that exercise while laughing and giggling and carrying a binky in one hand and a bottle of milk in the other!

I’m convinced that Mother Nature didn’t invent naptime for the kids, she invented it for the adults, to keep us from keeling over face-first into a bowl of applesauce.

There’s a story going around about a high school coach who took an innovative approach to getting his team ready for the new season. Instead of weight training and calisthenics, he simply ordered his players to do everything a toddler did.

There was a lot of lying on their back with their legs in the air. A lot of up-downs – you know, that baby specialty of going from upright to seated repeatedly (yes, football team fall down, go boom). And lots of creeping and crawling to go with running with arms waving all around.

And you guessed it. The kids couldn’t do it and begged to go back to their normal, exhaustive workouts.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I would very likely buy the pay-per-view of NFL players (to be exact, a specific few who shall remain nameless) trying and failing to act like toddlers. For some it’s not really much of a stretch, but I digress.

The great Hugh Downs famously said, “Growing old isn’t for sissies.”

To that, I think we can safely add, “Being a toddler isn’t for wimps.”