‘If we’re in the gym, that’s where the kids want to be, too’

Stephanie and Ryan Corcoran rowing with their five children, Juno, Culainn, Elvi, Bernard and Vincent; Wexford, Ireland

Until 18 months ago, Steph and Ryan Corcoran were still living in a small house in suburban Dublin with five young children and two dogs. When they moved south to a bigger place in rural Wexford, where Ryan is a schoolteacher, change was as much a logistical necessity as a lifestyle choice.

The couple had met in Bray, near Dublin, through a shared passion for sport. They did it all, and were particularly fond of rowing. When they started a family, they were determined not to be touchline observers or glorified taxi drivers. “I think there’s something wrong there, where sports have got so organised now compared with when I grew up and we were just playing outside the whole time,” says Ryan, who is 46. “I think it can take away from what you can do as a family.”

As well as a larger house, the Corcorans now have space in the garden for a little football pitch with makeshift floodlights for dark winter afternoons. There’s also a big steel shed that has become a gym, and a place for Ryan and Steph, 43, to work part-time as personal trainers. (Steph took redundancy from a bank soon after starting a family.)

It’s dark and almost bedtime for the kids when Ryan offers a video tour of the shed. He’s wearing shorts and bare feet, despite the cold and rain, and his eldest three scamper after him. Bernard, 11, Culainn, 10. and Elvi, eight, hop straight on the rowing machines and play the fish game – varying the intensity of their strokes to move a marine avatar up and down the machines’ little screens, gobbling up fish as they go.

Last year, the three kids were among the youngest competitors in Ireland’s indoor rowing championships. They had to row for 2,000 metres as quickly as they could. “I think they were the slowest three there, but it was just a bit of fun and good practice,” Ryan says.

Family life is a whirlwind of physical fun, and screen time is restricted to weekends. Last June, the whole family vowed to swim in the sea every day. They play football in the garden and go for long walks. Bernard and Culainn have started outdoor rowing. Elvi is keener on gymnastics, but more than anything loves to play The Floor is Lava in the shed gym, inspired by the Netflix series in which families often compete together.

“It’s not a case of putting them on specific programmes or putting any pressure on them, it’s more about ‘monkey see, monkey do’,” says Ryan. “If they see you coming home and eating rubbish and watching TV, that’s what they’ll want to do. If we’re out in the gym, that’s where they want to be, too.”

“They make it fun,” adds Bernard, when asked why he likes exercising with his parents. Like any self-respecting 11-year-old, he admits there are times when he has to be coaxed out of the house. “But mostly you just want to go and do it,” he says.

‘When Mum plays, it’s as if she’s a different person’

Kay Patel playing cricket with her daughter Shreya; Leicester, UK

Kailash “Kay” Patel grew up in a big family of dairy farmers in Gujarat, India. After school and completing a long list of domestic chores, there was very little time for anything else. But Kay, who is now 47, always dreamed of playing sport. At weekends, she remembers using a wooden laundry paddle for back-yard cricket games.

“We were little then, but in those days, after a certain age girls weren’t allowed to engage with boys as much,” Kay says from her home in Leicester. Sport became something other people did as life was in large part laid out for her. In 1998, her husband, Bhupendra, an insurance broker from the East Midlands, travelled to India to marry Kay and returned with her to live in Birmingham.

In 2003, the couple moved to Leicester with their newborn daughter, Shreya, who is now 21. There would be no limits on her sporting life, and soon she was going to an after-school club every day. She excelled at netball in particular, “But for some reason I hated cricket,” Shreya says. “It was the one sport I wouldn’t play.”

The Patels’ son, Tanay, arrived five years after Shreya. He was only one when, in 2009, Kay opened a sandwich shop in the centre of Leicester. Life was frantic. “I just felt lonely,” Kay recalls. “I wasn’t going anywhere, just cleaning, dropping the kids at school, coming back, doing the shop, cooking, washing up … it was too much.”

In 2016, Kay saw an online post by Mira Patel, a coach who was appealing for new players for a women’s cricket club. “I never thought I’d play cricket again, and didn’t even know how to go there because I didn’t have much confidence in driving, but when a friend offered to take me I said I’d give it a try,” Kay says.

The evening sessions were initially at Shreya’s school and Shreya, then 13, agreed to stay late to join her mum. In time, she learned to enjoy the game. For Kay, the chance to do something for herself – something that she had once loved – was transformative. “I lost all this stuff when I was in India, and now I could live my childhood at the same time as Shreya,” she says. “I loved it.”

The sessions were popular and became part of Bharat Sports Club, a grassroots cricket club that previously lacked a women’s team. Shreya is now a talented batter, but she primarily appreciated what the sport was doing for her mum and their relationship. “It was a chance to spend time with her when she wasn’t annoyed or upset about the shop or whatever,” Shreya says. “Honestly, she’d come back from work and then play cricket, and it was like she was a different person.”

Shreya has continued to exploit the opportunities her mother never had. She’s about to finish a degree in football business and finance at the University Campus of Football Business in Manchester. She still finds time to play in matches alongside her mum, who she admits is the better bowler.

Kay is one of the oldest players on the team. “They call me ‘Kay Auntie’, and they’re like my adopted children,” she says. The sandwich shop has now closed and Kay has devoted her life to cricket, with the full support of Bhupendra, who is now 56. She has qualified as an umpire, started studying for her coaching qualifications, and runs an over-50s walking cricket club. “Cricket has made me look forwards,” she says. “I’m nearly half a century in age, and now I can see my future.”

‘We had to teach mum to cycle’

Nyaradzo Trish Chikwanha riding bikes with her twin sons, Jacob and James; Northampton, UK

Five years ago, Trish, as she is known, discovered that her twin boys were on the autism spectrum. She already knew that sport helped them to burn energy and to stay calmer and more focused. Committed to helping the twins to “thrive in their diagnosis”, as she puts it, Trish has steadily encouraged them to do more, from swimming to archery, netball and gymnastics.

The twins, who are now eight, also love cycling, and made the transition from balance bikes to pedals easily. They like to ride fast, which was OK when they were smaller; Trish, who is 42, could walk briskly along behind them, occasionally picking up the pieces after crashes. “Then there was a time when they were too fast and I couldn’t catch up,” she says.

Trish bought her own wheels last year. James, who is sitting next to her on a video call, delights in describing the role reversal that followed. “She bought a bicycle, but she didn’t know how to cycle and so we had to teach her,” he says with a grin.

Trish grew up in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city, where her parents worked for the postal service. Her father never exercised and, at the time, Trish thought little of the aerobics sessions her mother did in front of the TV. Trish also had asthma, and it was assumed she couldn’t do much sport. She married young and her husband moved to the UK to work as a care nurse.

In 2013, when she was 32, Trish followed and the couple settled in Northampton. They had the boys two years later in 2015. Trish, who had worked as an accounts clerk in Zimbabwe, also planned to go into nursing, but she soon found what she now sees as a higher calling.

“I think most of us, when we came here, focused on earning money and we disregarded our health,” she says. “And that’s not working for us because we’ve seen so many deaths and so much bad health in my community. We have to look after ourselves and come out of this mindset of waiting until we’re sick to get help.”

Trish has become a personal trainer, and works for charities to promote exercise and better diets. She now thinks her mother’s aerobics sessions planted a seed in her mind.

Cycling has become Trish’s favourite way to join in with her kids. “We’ll come back after three hours of cycling, and the boys will have a nap and then they’ll have just the right energy to concentrate on piano or reading,” she says.

Trish also trains with her children in the garden, and regularly goes swimming and hiking with them. It has all helped her navigate life’s highs and lows as she separated from her husband, abandoned her church, lost weight and became a vegan. “It’s been a rollercoaster, but I’ve learned so much and grown as a person,” she says.

“For me, exercise is a time of meditation, because when we’re outside together it’s more quiet than when we’re inside.”

‘We all started karate at the same time’

Katy and Paul Greer learning karate with their daughter, Lucy; Stretford, Greater Manchester, UK

Paul and Katy Greer say they lacked confidence and resilience as children, and were anxious to “fill in those gaps” for Lucy, who is seven. “I think resilience is, in a way, more important than happiness,” says Paul, who is 40 and works as a school lab technician. “If you give someone resilience, they can figure out the rest for themselves.”

Paul had always fancied karate, but says that he didn’t have the courage to actually get involved before he became a father. He and Katy, who is 39, had never been sporty and were keen to set a much better example for Lucy. When a friend recommended Sale Dojo, a karate club near their home in Stretford, south of Manchester, they thought they would all give it a go.

“It’s a lot easier to encourage someone to do something when you do it yourself,” says Katy, two years on. The family now cycles to the club three times a week and have amassed several belts and medals. “I think it helps Lucy to understand why we think it’s important,” Katy adds.

Lucy, who is sitting on Paul’s lap during an evening video call, is a bundle of energy. “You’re not flexible, are you Daddy?” She says she loves hitting the pads they use in kumite, the fighting side of karate, but also enjoys kata, the performance of a pattern of moves. “Sensei tells us what to do and then sometimes I remember and Daddy doesn’t and then Daddy has to follow what I do instead of me having to follow what Daddy does,” she says without pausing for a second to take a breath.

And why does she like that?

“Because Daddy’s always telling me it’s bedtime when it’s bedtime … and I get to go to bed late on karate nights! ”

Paul, who met Katy in 2003, when they were both students at the University of Manchester, says the rare experience of starting to learn a new skill at the same time as your young child has been levelling. “I think if we had done karate as kids and asked Lucy to do it now, without joining her, we’d be thinking about it in the context of where we had got to … you know, ‘You’ll get there eventually, keep trying,’” he says. “Whereas now we’re all at the same level, so we can talk about it and what we find hard and what’s fun.”

He sees the activity as a complement to screens and less organised play. “You have to be accurate and precise in karate, and you don’t realise how valuable those skills are if you don’t have them,” he says.

Katy, who also works as a science technician in education, says that Lucy is a high achiever at school. “And it sounds mean, but it’s good for her to get experience of not doing as well, because when you’re in a bout, you can’t always win.” But Lucy often does win, and keeps her medals on a chest of drawers.

Her parents’ pride in her is plain to see. Does she also feel proud of them? “Not reaaaallly,” she says, fidgeting, and the whole family laugh.

‘I like being muscular. I can bench-press 40kg’

Deborah Sudul weight training with sons Gregg and Mike; Calgary, Canada

When her children were young, Deborah Sudul happily watched from the sidelines as they variously swam, skied and rode BMX bikes. Always healthy, and naturally slim at 6ft 2in (1.88 metres), the piano teacher felt blessed never to have had to really bother with exercise herself; walking the dog was as strenuous as things got.

“When I was about 64, I came back from a doctor’s appointment with a diagnosis of mild osteoporosis and everything changed,” says Deb, who is now 69, from the family home in Calgary, Canada. She learned that physical activity involving a mix of strength training and aerobic exercise would be a vital part of dealing with the condition, in which bones weaken and the risk of fractures increases.

When Mike, now 35 and the youngest of Deb’s children, heard the news, “He just said, ‘Right, that’s it, you’re going to the gym, you’re going to lift weights, you’re going to get stronger and that’s all there is to it,’” Deb recalls.

When he was 16, Mike had started following his big brother, Gregg, to the gym. Gregg, 40, is a smidgen under 7ft tall and was a talented basketball player when, aged 19, he started lifting weights to flesh out his frame.

Both Gregg, who runs a speakers’ bureau, and his brother, who’s no tiddler at 6ft 7in, were aware of the importance of strength training for ageing bodies, and they had been trying to persuade their mother to join them before her diagnosis. However, she was wary. “The gym they go to is not like a designer gym,” she says. “There are guys there who are pretty serious bodybuilders – a lot of sweaty, noisy men – and I found that a little bit intimidating.”

When she rocked up at the gym flanked by her mountainous sons almost six years ago, Deb remembers feeling nerves alongside pride. And as they began coaching her, the pride flowed both ways. “We’ve always had a good relationship, but seeing her getting stronger and feeling more confident has really had a positive impact,” Gregg says.

Deb, who remarried 10 years ago after separating from her first husband in 2002, began to see fast results. “That just spurred me on. I liked being more muscular. I liked being atypical for a woman of my age.” She can now bench-press or dead-lift about 40kg. “I have a six-year-old granddaughter and I exhort her to be strong.”

Mike, who works in IT, remembers spotting his mother flexing her arms in the mirror, something he used to do endlessly as a teenager. “She was 64 and had never weight-trained in her life, but it’s funny how there’s no boundary to the appreciation of the development of one’s body,” he says.

Deb aimed at physical gains, and her bone health is stable, but the confidence boost has been just as big. “You often hear about women becoming invisible as they age,” she says. “Your hair goes white, you become hesitant, and I’m determined that even if I’m invisible to others, I’m absolutely not feeling that way myself.”

When she goes to the gym now, often without her sons, she feels like one of the gang. “I quickly realised I could chat with that beefy guy in the corner,” she says. “But mostly being with my boys was huge.” She begins to choke up. (“Oh my God!” Mike says in mock horror.) “Not only are they great company, and we have a nice time together, but they cared enough to invest their time, their energy and their concern in me, and as a parent you can’t ask for anything more than that.”

‘To work out with my family is a joy’

Jo Gibbons is joined for workouts on Zoom by her son, John, and daughter, Penny; Stratford‑upon-Avon, UK, and Chicago, US

When the Covid-19 pandemic swept through the US in March 2020, Penny Gibbons had already found herself isolated. She had been in Chicago for six years and was living alone in an apartment when the order came to stay at home. Visa complications ruled out a dash home to the UK.

“This is something we haven’t talked about as a family, but it was a really difficult time for me, emotionally,” says Penny, 36, on a Zoom call from the US. Her mother, Jo, 68, and brother John, 37, have dialled in from their homes outside Stratford-upon-Avon. “I’ll be honest, I was incredibly sad and lonely.”

Penny, who runs an environmental charity, says the family has always bonded over doing, rather than talking about stuff. Her parents, who worked for the same printing firm, had met at their tennis club. Sport had always been a big part of their lives until her father, Paul, died suddenly from cancer when Penny was 15.

“The approach in the family was kind of, ‘Keep calm and carry on,’ and that didn’t quite work for me,” says Penny of the loss. “I think, like a lot of British families, words aren’t always our strength, and coming together and connecting over things we enjoy is much easier.”

When the pandemic struck, Jo began meeting up with her children on Zoom, and playing Boggle as a way to bond. Then, as a lockdown fitness craze gave rhythm and succour to millions, Jo’s longtime personal trainer and friend, Alex Csompo, began offering online sessions to the family.

John and Penny invested in yoga mats, kettlebells and elastic strength bands, and began scheduling regular fitness sessions, led by Alex. Conversation would often flow along with the sweat. John’s son, Rory, – Jo’s first grandchild – was six months old, and would often make unscheduled appearances. So did Penny’s cats. Her world started to feel bigger.

“I was at a stage where anything felt like a challenge, and I didn’t feel excited about doing things, but having the consistency, having accountability partners and knowing that the activity was helping me move into a lifestyle I wanted to be in, was all very motivating,” she recalls.

There was never a conversation, post-Covid, about ending the sessions, which continue about once a month and serve as a transatlantic bridge. Rory is now four and enjoys attempting to correct Alex’s moves. His baby sister, Iona, also makes cameo appearances. “It’s a valuable workout in its own right, but it’s also just a way of connecting and seeing each other in a lighthearted way,” Penny says.

Jo, who lives five minutes away from John and his family, adds: “We do have a lot of banter, and for me to be able to work out with my children is just an absolute joy.”

Penny came out of the pandemic stronger and is now in a new relationship with an American. Apart from anything, she says the Zoom workouts have become a valuable part of the grieving process. “Our dad was a very active person as well, and I see this as a way to honour him,” she says. “I think he would be very happy to know that we continue to spend time together in this way.”