Congratulations. I’m four months in and it has been a blast so far.
Step 1: have a home gym. Everyone’s schedules (both work and family) are different, but I would have to significantly alter my daily routine right now to work out without a home gym; however, with a good garage gym, it’s been a breeze (more details below).
Of course, you may have to adapt your training a little bit to what you have at home versus what’s available at your preferred gym, but that’s a workable solution. You could even train at home during the week and work something out with your wife for you to go to the gym on Sat or Sunday to hit anything you can’t do at home (but really: ask your wife very nicely, and make sure that you offer her the chance to do something in return, i.e. she watches kid alone while you get to go to the gym on Saturday, she gets to go to yoga/spinning/get her nails done/whatever on Sunday while it’s your turn to parent solo).
This is important. With my home setup, I find it fairly easy to work out for 20 minutes every day (in fact, when he was a newborn, I usually timed it so I worked out while she was feeding him).
I think it would be a harder sell to my wife to train for 60-90 minutes twice a week (just wouldn’t feel right being in the garage for that long while she had the kid alone). But some people may prefer that - just being “at home” and parenting for most of the week and cramming all of your training into 2 or 3 longer sessions.
Again: talk to your wife (when the time comes) and figure out which is best for you and your family.
Seems like CC has given you good advice here. That can/should all be doable with bands and a couple of dumbbells.
I expect that’s coming soon for me, once my little dude can actually hold his head up a little more.
I mean, we sound like a cult, but most of us that have gone home-gym will endlessly sing its praises. Assuming you have the space, and financial means, and no other limiting steps (i.e. if you move once a year, could be a pain) it is awesome.
Definitely a viable alternative if that works out better for you. Doesn’t Waterbury have some articles about just having a heavy kettlebell & just accumulating a bunch of swings and TGU’s scattered throughout the day?
Kettlebells can definitely be your friend in this situation. I love my heavy deadlifts now but the first few years logging on this site I was all kettlebells and pull-ups.
Finally, to what I do: if my wife & I are both home for the evening, I usually squeeze in my workout during the first feeding after I get home from work. If I get home at 5, kiss the wife real quick, she nurses him while I spend 20 minutes getting my workout in, hop in the shower & now it’s my turn to be dad for the night while mom looks after herself a bit.
If my wife is out for a rehearsal or something, I’ll feed the little man, play with him, get him down for an evening snooze, then take the monitor out to the garage and work out. It’s really not that bad. He sleeps pretty soundly by now.
As others have said, training economy becomes key. Anecdotal experience, of course, but I feel like focusing on heavy deadlifts has prepared my body really well for almost any other challenge that I would need to throw at it (not necessarily if I were comparing myself vs competitive high-level strongmen, but in general). Limit strength is somewhat of a master quality. I spent a lot of time working deadlifts and relatively little other stuff in the past couple years, and the strength gains from all that deadlifting carried over pretty well to “other stuff” when I’ve re-tested it and spent even a little time working on it. So, while you have to figure out your own way, if you are really pressed for time, I have found high-frequency, low-volume, heavy deadlifts a way to feel that I’ve stayed all-around strong and pretty well able to adapt to other challenges.