KEEPING RELUCTANT PARTICIPANTS ENGAGED

We start our health reboot in March, when regulations mean that fitness sessions must be via Zoom. Morris will coach us through 35-minute high intensity strength training workouts twice weekly – to begin repair of lockdowninduced damage. The fast pace will raise our heart-rates and boost cardiovascular fitness, and the exercises themselves will target and strengthen muscle groups (particularly those neglected during this period of house arrest).

We invest in four sets of resistance bands – brilliant for recreating machine-based exercises such as lateral pull-downs and chest-openers. In our initial session – which doesn’t require much space and takes place in our lounge – Morris spots our weaknesses and corrects our technique.

We work our calves with calf raises, we do press-ups to work the chest, tricep dips on chairs, and abdominal work on the floor. After a year of blundering, random attempts to train, Morris’s precise instruction, demonstration and gimlet-eyed form correction is a relief. Her cheerful enthusiasm is infectious. I never thought I’d be grateful to be talked through a glute bridge. (“Squeeze the glute first, peel the back off the floor one vertebrae at a time. Heels hip-distance apart. Then gently down again, one vertebrae at a time, glutes squeezed to the very end. Lovely!”) I learn that forward lunges – “push through the front heel” – also help activate the glutes. Conrad – the only one of us who’s stayed fit – loves every moment. But despite Morris’s encouragement – “Caspar, you’re killing it!” – my youngest, 14, doesn’t crack a smile. Fortunately, he’s up against a motivational pro.

Morris says, “The challenge we’ve got as lockdown eases is there can be family lethargy, as we’ve been seeing each other all the time. Everybody almost has this desire to get out and avoid each other.” I hadn’t realised how true this was until now. Phil, fixated on getting back to the weight room at the gym, is another reluctant participant.

To negotiate that, she suggests changing environment and the dynamic – so now that rules permit, she suggests organising tennis doubles, for instance, but asking your teen to bring a friend. This suits me as I’m dreadful at the game. Phil and the boys love it, and Caspar’s best pal is pleased to be a fourth.

Meanwhile, Morris adjusts our family workouts to appeal to the children’s competitive nature. Before our upper body session, I set up seven “stations” around the room, each for a particular exercise. I write – for instance – shoulder press x80 on a piece of A4, and place it by the station. Between us, in just over half an hour, the family must complete 80 press ups, 80 upright rows, 80 tricep dips, 80 bicep curls, 48 reverse pulls, and 80 leg raises.

It’s a genius tactic. It’s brilliant fun, relatively quick, and makes a team of us. We scrawl the number of repetitions we’ve done by our name, before hurrying to the next station. As I manage a paltry 10 leg raises, Conrad is lumbered with 30. He complains, but is chuffed at this chance to show off. Even Caspar forgets himself and enjoys it. “You’re doing it without rest, so your heart-rate goes up – your fitness is improving,” says Morris. “Nice little workout,” says Phil. The next day he can barely walk.

Morris’s advice is to break away from the associations of lockdown – so find any activity that you can all do away from home “that redefines you as a group”. Don’t give the foot-draggers time to think. Her strategy with Caspar is, “What can I do to distract him? Because they enjoy it when they’re not thinking about it.” And don’t attempt too much – “that won’t work either”.

FROM SOFA LOAFING TO SPORTING SUCCESS

I book the family into a course at our local climbing centre – open from April 12. The boys and Phil used to go often, and I’d make a guest appearance, but enthusiasm waned. Now starved of entertainment, we are thrilled to be back. And thanks to our sessions with Morris (and especially the biceps and back work) we’re fit to climb.

So if you fancy strength training together, and your teens are reluctant, do explain you’re working muscle groups that will help them excel at their favourite sport. Tricep extensions will improve your backhand, for example, and static lunges, pushing from the back leg, will boost football or rugby kicks. “Doing all that training in a massive huff has paid off,” I say to Caspar, as he shimmies over boulders like a mountain goat. He looks happy. We all do. It means everything.