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Strength Training for New Parents (or very busy people) | Time-Efficient Strategies for Progress
Barbell strength training or powerlifting training after having kids is HARD. Finding the time and energy to powerlift after having babies has its challenges for all parents, but, most of all, time to train and the ability to recover is most affected. In this episode of the PRS Podcast, hosts Dr. Rori Alter and Dr. John Petrizzo continue their New Parent Training series, discussing how to adapt strength training when time and recovery resources are limited—a challenge that applies not only to new parents but to anyone with a demanding schedule.This episode discusses the importance of flexibility and consistency over perfection, how to modify your lifting program to suit your current life stage, and the critical need to listen to your body and adjust your approach. It also covers how to stay realistic and avoid frustration by embracing the idea that this is a temporary phase, and there will be opportunities to get back to a more robust powerlifting routine that works for you.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
The Reality of Training as a New Parent – Is it really any different from other life demands that impact training time and recovery?
Three Key Situations Where We Lower the Ceiling on Training Intensity – Understanding when and why you should adjust your expectations to stay injury-free and maintain progress.
How to Prepare for Training as a Parent Before You Even Have Kids – The mindset shift that makes the transition to time-restricted training smoother.
Optimizing Training When Recovery Resources Are Limited – Practical strategies for making progress even when sleep and recovery time are compromised.
Adjusting Training Volume for Maximum Efficiency – How to modify your workouts to get stronger without spending hours in the gym.
How Long Should a Barbell Lift Take? – Setting realistic timeframes for training sessions to fit your schedule.
Load Adjustments to Stay Within a Specific Timeframe – Strategies to manage training intensity and keep workouts productive.
Two Time-Efficient Training Week Setups – How to structure your program for consistency and flexibility as a new parent.
Maximizing Training Session Efficiency – Tips to ensure you get the most out of each session while maintaining consistency.
Reducing Mental Barriers to Training – Simple ways to overcome the mindset challenges that may be keeping you from getting a session in.
Whether you're a new parent, a busy professional, or someone struggling to balance life and training, this episode provides actionable strategies to help you stay strong, make progress, and train smarter—not harder.
Resources:
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Email: podcast@progressiverehabandstrength.com
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[00:00:00] Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: Alright guys, welcome back to the Progressive Rehab & Strength podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rori Alter, head clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength, back with episode two of the new parent training series, which is a series of three episodes here with my lovely husband, clinical coach here at Progressive Rehab & Strength, Professor of Exercise Science at Adelphi University, and physical therapist. We are both powerlifters, strength lifters, and parents of two. And we intended to record all three of these episodes back to back in like one shot, but in good old parent fashion, parent of young littles, it's been two months since we recorded the first episode, so here we are recording episode two. And just like a little recap of the last episode, this is really the first episode of the series where John was really geared towards like the dad or the non-breastfeeding non-night caring parent. It is definitely different for different parents, depending on what role you play in the baby's life, how you guys divide up responsibilities, night responsibilities, daytime responsibilities, feeding responsibilities, breastfeeding versus bottle feeding, pumping versus formula feeding, mom's up all night, dad's up all night, You split night responsibilities, one gets more sleep, one gets less sleep, both get equal sleep. It's going to be different for every parent. So the last episode really gave the perspective from the parent who has less of the newborn or infant like physical demands, if that makes sense, and we're going to now dive into strategies for both parents and really, for anyone who is short on time. That's the cool thing about the programing that we do at PRS, like even though we're calling it kind of like new parent programming, it really just applies to anyone who is in the sleep deprived, little time for yourself, little time for training category, and even it kind of falls under the category of someone who doesn't have a high tolerance for training stress. So training stress could be volume, it could be intensity, it could be the combination of both of those. So someone who just doesn't have the ability to recover very well between training sessions, and someone who doesn't have a lot of time in their schedule to actually, like, have a ideal training session. Like the ideal programming for the ideal scenario for the person who has like the ideal amount of recovery resources as well, if that all makes sense. Does that make sense, John?
[00:03:14] Dr. John Petrizzo, PT, CSCS, SSC: Yeah, I think that's pretty well said. I mean, you know, when you think about most of our clients, they really fall into this category. You know, they're people that have busy professional and family lives. And, you know, the reality of the situation is that those sorts of things are going to affect your recovery. They're going to affect your ability to train maybe in the way that you would like to ideally in terms of, you know, frequency of sessions, length of your sessions, how many sets you're able to do for a given exercise, and that sort of thing. So, you know, we're talking about new parents here, but, you know, a lot of people fall into this category, whether you're a new parent or you have, you know, adolescent kids and just, you know, kind of a hectic, busy professional life. Like the reality is that those things affect training, and I think the more accepting you are of that reality, you know, the better off you're going to be in the long run, because you'll make appropriate adjustments to your program before you end up getting injured or just, you know, stalling out and not making progress and that sort of thing for a prolonged period of time.
[00:04:29] Dr. Rori Alter, PT, PRSCC: Yeah. I have an article that I wrote a really long time ago. It's called Progression Without Regression, and I'll link it in the show notes for you guys. I wrote this for anyone who's following any type of program because you really have to make changes to your life if you don't want to get hurt, if you don't want to stall, if you don't want to go backwards in your progress, if you want to have more time outside of training to do other things, or if you don't have a lot of time in your training sessions and you have to make the most of your training, then we have to adjust things before they start to go awry. So this article, Progression Without Regression, is really written for anyone, and I think in the article I used like a make a change when these RFPs are kind of showing up and we do that with all of our clients. We'll monitor the relative intensity of however you want to monitor the relative intensity, whether it's using rate of perceived exertion or reps in reserve or just like this is really hard, this looks like a grinder, you're taking five to ten minute rests. You got to monitor your training and look at the intensity, the relative intensity, and make adjustments before things get bad. And that applies to anyone, whether you're injured, whether you're a new parent with sleep deprivation, whether you're a night shift worker, whether you just have like one hour to get your training in, whatever, you have to make changes. Otherwise things start to go south and south could be anything. So that article is very applicable to anyone, even though it was kind of written for the standard program with nothing going on. You can make those changes relative to your situation, so I'll link that article and we do that with all of our clients. So even though we're calling this new parent concepts kind of thing, these concepts are just what we apply to everyone. We might lower that ceiling of what's acceptable, if that makes sense.