I can remember an outdoorsy childhood, with plenty of long walks and sporty holidays. Without consciously doing so, my parents also modelled active lifestyles at home: my dad kept fit on a basement rowing machine and my mum cycled to work in the 90s, when very few people did. Meanwhile, I became a playground football addict and enjoyed tearing up the local park on my bike.
But did we do much together, in a meaningful way?
Now that I have small kids of my own, it was a question I was interested to explore when Saturday magazine asked me to find families who exercise together. It's one thing to slightly wearily play hide and seek in a playground with a six-year-old, or to drive a 10-year-old to a football match and watch from the touchlines. But what's it like to really get involved, en famille?
Guardian readers helped me find out. Dozens of families responded to a callout with amazing examples of how they worked out or played together. Hugely grateful for them all, my editor and I chose four families with slightly different stories, and with children of varying ages, from a three-year-old Irish would-be rower to a 40-year-old Canadian bodybuilder.
As we set about arranging photoshoots and interviews, I extended the search by contacting dozens of sports clubs and charities all over the UK. I wanted to find two more examples of intergenerational bonding to help us represent British sporting family life as well as possible. This quest led me to two mothers whose decision to be active with their children also involved remarkable personal journeys.
Zoom interviews, which became so commonplace for journalists during the pandemic, are better than old-fashioned phone calls. But you still risk missing the human sparks that tend only to be visible when you meet in person. For boring logistical reasons, there was no other way for this story – and I've never enjoyed video calls as much.
All the families I chatted to had identified a need to be active together, whether that was to help manage autism, alleviate the symptoms of pandemic isolation, strengthen ageing bones, instil resilience – or just to align lifestyles in an age where screens and junk food can promote sedentarism.
But, above all, exercise as a communal endeavour had boosted love in these families, and it was a privilege, an inspiration – and a joy – to be welcomed into their homes, however briefly and remotely. As we wait for the Olympics, where the best stories often involve gleeful parents who have sacrificed so much in support of their children's devotion to achievement on the biggest stage, it also left me realising that the true power of sport starts at home.
Meanwhile, I'm still finding the right time to suggest to my family that we all book a lesson at the local karate club.
