25/08/2026
All you see in the holiday photos are the smiles.
And that’s exactly how it should be.
What you don’t see is the long car journey, followed by cancelled trains in to Paris that turned a relatively simple journey into an adventure through different 5 different stations and a coach journey each way in a place where you can’t even read the signs on the walls😬.
And all on about 4 hours sleep
You don’t see me with a tired child in one arm and a double pushchair in the other, running up a flight of stairs because we thought we were about to miss the next train.
Or carrying kids through hour-long queues at Disney.
Putting them on my shoulders so they could actually see the shows.
Walking 20–25,000 steps a day around the parks and still having the energy to enjoy it with them.
None of that is particularly impressive. It’s just life with young kids.
But it did get me thinking about what being “fit” actually means when you’re a busy parent.
It’s easy to reduce fitness to weight, calories, PBs or what you can lift in the gym.
But there’s something really nice about simply having the strength and fitness to deal with whatever the day throws at you without having to think twice about it.
Picking your kids up.
Carrying all their stuff.
Running for a train.
Spending an entire day on your feet.
Saying yes to doing things rather than wondering whether you’ve got the energy for them.
That’s the sort of fitness I think matters.
Not making the gym your life.
Using the gym to make you stronger, fitter and more capable for everything else in it.
And, let’s be fair…
Feeling confident in your clothes when somebody gets the camera out for the holiday photos isn’t a bad bonus either. 😂
