How I got my daughter to go the extra mile
We've had a physical relationship since my daughter moved out. Well - not in the way you might think, it's not about physical closeness. Rather, my daughter usually finds her way home for two reasons: to eat here or to exercise. The raiding of the fridge goes without saying. The training thing is a little more surprising. Because at first there was nothing to suggest that this would happen.
It started with puberty. The daughter experienced what most girls experience during this time: Stress. The body changes, secretes strange fluids and attracts unwanted attention. Then there are mood swings and general confusion: who am I, what will I become and how will I ever know? I remember this time vividly to this day and as a mother I probably dreaded this phase even more than my daughter.
Back then, I found my way out of despair through sporting activity: exerting and challenging myself, the satisfaction of achieving something, the rush of happiness after the effort. But above all, sport is the best way to get to know yourself and your body and to feel it intensively. I'm no longer a teenager, but I still do sport today. And so I decided to show my daughter this way, should she be open to it.
As the body changes, so does the mind; energy and self-confidence grow with the muscles.
There was little to suggest this at first. After all, at this stage you have better things to do than exercise: lie in bed, chat with girlfriends, mope and hate your body. But every time she complained about fat legs or feeling bad, I invited her to lift weights with me, which I do in my own weight room at home. At one point, she crawled out of her room and picked up a dumbbell.
You can't call it love at first sight. It was more like a road paved with curses. When I urged her to push herself to the limit, because that's the only way to achieve muscle growth, she called me morbidly ambitious. By nature, she has little inclination to push the boundaries, which is generally a very sensible attitude. But if you want to improve, you need to go the extra mile. And that doesn't come for free. Sometimes she gave up in frustration and in the middle of training. I let her, because the most important maxim in sport is: Just do it. The rest is an encore. But the more you put in, the more you get back.
Despite her songs of lamentation sung in all registers, she always came back. And still comes now, even though she no longer lives at home. Because that's how it is with training. You don't realise how, but suddenly you get better and suddenly you're having fun. As your body changes, so does your mind, your energy and self-confidence grow with your muscles, you feel more comfortable in your body and understand your needs better. And at some point, you will succeed in what you previously thought was impossible.
She now even lifts more weight than I do for certain exercises. And although I'm morbidly ambitious, I'm pleased about that. Because it's a reason to make an effort and delay my decline into old age as much as possible. And if she comes home more often to outdo me, that's fine by me. Even if the fridge is empty afterwards.
