How to Train as a New Dad (No Sleep? No Time? Follow This Program.)

Last year I became a dad and man, it really does change your life.

Your life doesn’t change as much after marriage but it changes significantly after you have a child.

Your sleep and energy levels will suffer.

Even when you get a full 8 hours of sleep, the sleep quality isn’t as high and your recovery is lower. The only way to describe it is that your sleep isn’t “as deep” as it was when you didn’t have a kid.

It does get better, but you need to modify your training program unless you want to demolish yourself given your lower recovery capability.

What I find works best during this time is a 2-3 days a week full body split.

Why a full body split?

Because it gives your entire body stimulus to grow, and thus minimizes the cost of training missed due to poor sleep/rest.

For example, if you have a hard week with low sleep, you can easily just skip one of the workouts and still have trained your entire body 2x that week.

Training 4 or 5 times a week is very hard once you have a baby at home. Training 3 times a week is something you can do on most weeks. Training 2 times a week with a new baby is very doable on all weeks.

Since no body part is being trained excessively per workout, the soreness you will get from this training program will be low and manageable.

This programming works really well for people low on time/energy/sleep and quite honestly, works really well in general too.

Try it out, and see for yourself.

Example workout

2 sets each body part, done to failure. 5-8 rep range for the compound work, 8-12 for the isolation work.

Note: Workout 2 is programmed such that it minimizes risk of overuse injuries.

– Harsh Strongman