Parents are Athletes

It’s safe to say this newsletter / endeavour is born out of an obsession.

An obsession with the simple idea that parents should be considered in the same breath as high performance athletes. And if they are to be considered in that same spirit, they are woefully under-supported and ill-equipped for the reality.

Yes it might sound a bit silly, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe with real conviction it to be true. Just a few things to get you thinking:

• 24/7 season, zero off-days – Unlike many sports seasons with built-in rest periods, parenting requires peak readiness every single day and night, often for years at a stretch.

• High-intensity interval workload – Days switch up between sudden surges (chasing a toddler around the house) and lower-tempo ‘recovery’ tasks (having a cup of tea and unloading the dishwasher whilst little one naps). Parents must switch gears instantly - which feels like an interesting mirroring of the demands of interval training.

• Chronic sleep restriction & circadian disruption – New parents average 4–6 hours of fragmented sleep for years on end, a deficit that elite teams treat with dedicated sleep coaches, recovery technology and more.

• Multi-system stress adaptation – Parenting taxes cardiovascular endurance (carrying infants, playground chases), muscular strength (lifting, baby-carrying), and cognitive focus, all at once.

• High stakes cognitive loading – Tracking feeding schedules, medical appointments, school forms, emotional cues, and household logistics - it’s executive function demands paralleling that of athletes required to making play calls in real-time.

• Emotional regulation under pressure – Staying calm through tantrums, medical scares, and teenage crises requires resilience tools similar to those sports psychologists teach Olympians - and yet parents seldom receive any formal training.

• Injury risk + repetitive-strain exposure – Frequent lifting with awkward biomechanics, floor-level play, and constant carrying often lead to back, wrist, and knee injuries which are comparable to overuse patterns in endurance athletes.

• Nutritional challenges and energy expenditure – Caloric burn from child-care tasks can exceed 2,000 kcal/day for an active parent, but meals are often eaten hastily or even skipped - far in contrast to athlete meal plans that are meticulously designed around output.

• Performance feedback loop without analysts – Outcomes (a child’s safety, mood, development) hinge on parental decisions made in milliseconds, but there’s no video replay or coaching staff to review and refine technique.

• Psychological stakes higher than any podium – The ‘scoreboard’ is a child’s lifelong well-being; perceived failure carries profound emotional weight, elevating stress hormones far beyond typical competitive stress.

• Limited institutional support and recovery resources – Where athletes have physiotherapists, nutritionists, and rest protocols, parents often face financial, cultural, or workplace barriers to even basic self-care.

• Ever-evolving playbook – As children grow, rules change (from swaddling to homework help). Parents must engage in continuous learning, akin to athletes mastering new formations or rules for each new season.

When you see it on paper like this, it’s kinda crazy right?! Being a parent is like being the ultimate hybrid athlete. Maybe that’s why so many parents are drawn towards Hyrox?!

Designed for Parents, not Parenting

Now there are no shortage of books helping you navigate the practicalities of becoming a parent - but they seem to over-index on the child, not the parent. About how to give them the best possible start in life, change their nappy, and how to do what you can to not f*ck them up in some way.

But what about you? What about giving you the best chance at this new life?

Becoming a parenting quite naturally feels like it’s all about the kids, but we shouldn’t all need too much convincing that we need to focus on ourselves too. I was blown away by how quickly I felt like I “lost myself” once I was 6 months deep into life with an infant - and spent very little time focussing on my own needs.

And maybe that’s part of the challenge. Athletes will have a life designed meticulously around the unique needs and demands of their sport - but parents are just supposed to work it out for themselves. We need to not just make it easier to give back to yourself, but also shift your mindset to see it as critical too.

But for anyone who has spent time already thinking about how to focus on themselves, you’ll like me have found yourself trying to use advice shaped up primarily by folks without kids! It just doesn’t feel compatible with life as a parent.

Now am I suggesting the advice and science doesn’t apply? Of course not. But what I am saying is how it is used might mean something very different in the context of parents. A few provocations below:

It’s all a bunch of brainfarts for now - but as someone who spends a lot of time with self help books and listening to podcasts on performance, I’ve got a strong sense that this body of work is really going to matter.

The suggestion here is not that we are going to launch a parenting olympics any time soon (although it makes for a very entertaining visual metaphor…).

The “Parents are Athletes” provocation is about shining a lens on the demands of parenting and the lack of tailored support provided to manage your mind, body, energy, time and much more.

In the next instalment, I’lll be sharing an introduction into my v1 approach to how I’m going to approach both the research and generating the output of this work - the output being practical, actionable protocols (rituals, tools, habits) that are impactful for and accessible to everyday parents.

See you next time.