You’re not lazy. You have decision fatigue from your kids, you’re exhausted from midnight wake-ups, and the last thing you want is another thing on the to-do list. At Kraken Fitness in North Burnaby, near Brentwood, coaches Josko and Brandon — both parents themselves — use a bare minimum protocol for clients in the trenches of parenthood: walk daily, prioritize protein, and fix your sleep environment. That’s it. Three things. And they work.
Watch: The Bare Minimum Workout
In this episode of the Kraken Power Podcast, Josko and Brandon lay out the bare minimum fitness protocol for busy, exhausted parents — three simple habits that keep you on track when life won’t let you do more.
Why All-or-Nothing Fails Parents
Everyone who gets into fitness thinks it has to be all or nothing. Either you’re going to the gym five days a week, tracking macros, and meal prepping on Sundays, or there’s no point. That mindset is exactly why parents fail.
Having a kid is one of the most stressful things you can do. Brandon puts it plainly: adding exercise on top of an already maxed-out stress load can push a parent over the edge rather than help them. When the bar is set at “110% commitment to fitness,” most parents look at that bar and say “what’s the point?” — and they do nothing instead.
Josko gets it now in a way he didn’t before having kids. Before his three kids, he used to think: “Just drop the kid at daycare and work out.” Now he understands the reality — the midnight wake-ups, the decision fatigue from figuring out what a toddler will wear, the sheer exhaustion that makes thinking about the gym feel like climbing Everest.
But here’s the thing: there have been periods where Josko worked out less. He didn’t stop entirely, because he figured out the bare minimum he could do and still stay on track. That’s the framework Kraken’s coaches use for every parent who walks in feeling guilty about not exercising.
The bare minimum isn’t the goal. It’s the floor that keeps you from losing everything while life is at its hardest. And it’s a bridge — because 10 minutes of walking today can become 20 minutes next week, which can become a gym session next month.
Bare Minimum 1: Walk Every Day
Walking is the single best thing a parent can do for their fitness when everything else feels impossible. The setup is as simple as it gets: put on shoes, exit the house, walk in a loop, come back.
Josko’s recommendation starts at 10 minutes. That’s it. Ten minutes of walking per day. It burns a few extra calories, it improves your mood, it gets you outside, and most importantly — it has expansion potential. Ten minutes becomes 20. Twenty becomes 30. Eventually, the person who could barely manage a daily walk is ready to add gym sessions.
The best part about walking for parents: you can include your family. Josko’s wife used to put the newborn in a stroller and walk around the block just to get some air. Brandon grabs his daughter and walks around the neighborhood. He looks at some trees. He gets sun. Progressive overload happens automatically because the kid gets heavier every week.
Walking also doesn’t add stress the way intense exercise can. A parent who’s already running on empty doesn’t need a HIIT workout — they need gentle movement that gives energy instead of draining it. Walking is the one form of exercise where you almost always feel better afterward than you did before.
At Kraken Fitness in Burnaby, coaches use walking as the entry point for parents who haven’t exercised in months or years. It removes every possible excuse: no gym membership needed, no equipment, no time commitment beyond 10 minutes, and your kids can come with you.
Bare Minimum 2: Protein-First Meals
The second bare minimum habit is prioritizing protein at every meal. Not tracking calories. Not meal prepping. Not weighing food. Just making sure protein shows up on every plate.
Brandon explains why protein is the single most impactful nutritional change a parent can make:
- Satiation — protein keeps you fuller longer, which means fewer cravings and less mindless snacking between meals
- Muscle preservation — even if you’re not exercising as much as you used to, adequate protein helps maintain lean muscle mass
- Calorie displacement — when you fill your plate with protein, you naturally eat fewer calories from carbs and fats without trying
The method doesn’t matter. Some Kraken clients use apps like MyFitnessPal. Some use the fist method — five to six fist-sized portions of protein per day. Some just make sure every meal includes meat, eggs, fish, or another protein source.
Brandon applies this with his own daughter too. Her meals are protein-forward. It’s not about restriction or rules — it’s about making protein the default rather than an afterthought.
For busy parents, the simplest version is: before you eat anything, ask “where’s the protein?” If there’s no protein on the plate, add some. That one habit, applied consistently, makes a bigger difference than any complicated diet plan that you’ll abandon in a week.
Bare Minimum 3: Fix Your Sleep Environment
Sleep is already compromised when you have young kids. Midnight feedings, crying toddlers, disrupted schedules — that’s the reality. You can’t control when your kid wakes up. But you can control the quality of sleep you get during the hours you do sleep.
Josko’s approach is environmental. Instead of treating post-bedtime hours as screen time (TV, phone scrolling, Netflix), he redesigned his home environment to wind down naturally:
Dim the lights early. At 8 PM — before the kids go to bed at 9 — Josko dims all the lights in the house. The family switched to electronic candles (battery-powered, always available) instead of overhead lights. The house goes dark, the kids get sleepy, and by 10 PM, the adults are too tired to stay up scrolling.
Blue light blocking glasses. On top of the dim lighting, Josko wears blue light blocking glasses in the evening. The combination of dark environment plus blocking the remaining blue light from screens makes falling asleep dramatically easier.
No bright screens before bed. The reason people stay up until midnight, 1 AM, 2 AM isn’t that they’re not tired. It’s that their phone and TV screens are keeping their brain awake. Bright lights after dark tell your brain it’s still daytime. Remove the bright lights, and your body’s natural sleepiness kicks in.
The key insight for parents: the time after kids go to bed feels precious, and it is. But spending it staring at a phone under bright lights doesn’t actually help you relax — it does the opposite and costs you sleep. Using that time in a dim, calm environment is more restorative and leads to better sleep quality during the limited hours available.
For parents with intermittent sleep (newborns waking every few hours), sleep quality matters even more than duration. The hours you do get need to count. A dark, screen-free wind-down makes those hours significantly more effective.
The Bare Minimum Is the Bridge
This bare minimum protocol isn’t meant to be permanent. It’s the floor that keeps you moving when everything in your life is competing for your energy.
Brandon frames it this way: just because this is the bare minimum doesn’t mean you can’t do more. But this is what you hold onto until you have the capacity for more. And before you know it, you’ll be back to a full exercise program — or building one for the first time.
For parents who never had a fitness routine before kids: this is also a starting point. Walk, eat protein, fix your sleep environment. That trio alone will make you healthier than most people who have gym memberships they don’t use.
The math is simple. Ten minutes of walking beats zero minutes plus guilt. A protein-focused meal beats skipping lunch because you’re overwhelmed. Going to bed at 10 PM in a dark house beats scrolling until midnight and waking up wrecked.
The bare minimum works because it removes the all-or-nothing barrier. You don’t have to train like a CrossFitter or eat like a bodybuilder. You just have to do three simple things, every day, and let them build into something bigger when you’re ready.
FAQ
What is the bare minimum workout for busy parents?
Kraken Fitness in Burnaby recommends three habits: walk 10 minutes daily, prioritize protein at every meal, and fix your sleep environment by dimming lights and removing screens before bed. These three habits maintain fitness, energy, and health during the most demanding parenting years without adding stress.
How much walking per day makes a difference?
Even 10 minutes of daily walking makes a measurable difference in mood, energy, and weight management. The key is consistency, not duration. Kraken’s coaches use walking as the entry point because it’s free, requires no equipment, and can include the whole family. Ten minutes often naturally expands to 20-30 over time.
Should new parents try to go to the gym?
Not necessarily. If getting to the gym adds more stress than it relieves, stick with the bare minimum protocol first. Walking, protein, and sleep hygiene can keep you on track until you have the bandwidth for gym sessions. Don’t force a program that your current life can’t sustain.
How do I improve sleep quality as a new parent?
Dim all house lights by 8 PM, switch to electronic candles, wear blue light blocking glasses, and avoid phone/TV screens before bed. You can’t control when your baby wakes up, but you can control the quality of sleep you get during the hours available. A dark wind-down makes those hours count more.
Is the bare minimum enough to see real fitness results?
The bare minimum maintains your baseline and prevents backsliding during high-stress parenting periods. It’s not designed to build a six-pack. It’s designed to keep you healthy and create a bridge to more when your capacity returns. Many Kraken clients start here and naturally progress to full programs within months.
Ready to Start?
If you’re a parent who’s been putting fitness last and you want a coaching team that understands real life, Kraken Fitness in North Burnaby near Brentwood offers a free trial week. Kraken’s coaches work with busy parents every day — no guilt, no pressure, just a plan that fits your life.
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About the Author
Josko Kraken is the founder of Kraken Fitness in North Burnaby near Brentwood and a father of three. He and co-owner Brandon built Kraken for non-gym people and understand firsthand that parenting changes everything about your fitness routine. Both are hosts of the Kraken Power Podcast, where they share practical fitness strategies for real people with real lives.
Welcome back to the Kraken Power Podcast, we’re your hosts Josko and Brandon and in today’s episode we’re gonna be talking about fitness for parents. If you’re busy and you’re tired and you feel guilty about not exercising, congratulations, you are normal, but don’t let your kids be an excuse for not at least doing the basics. Let’s dive in.
Welcome back to the Kraken Power Podcast. I just want to preface this entire podcast by saying that we are parents. I have three kids, you have a kid.
We do know what it feels like and we’ve been there, but I do, we do also understand that like, yeah, we own a gym. We’ve been personal trainers for a lot of like most of our lives or at least in fitness most of our lives. So it is a little bit easier for us than the regular person, but there is a routine that you can have that can be the bare minimum for you to at least be fit as a parent without having to spend so much time in the gym or like tracking your food.
Exactly, and I think that everyone, especially when getting into fitness, thinks it needs to be an all or nothing kind of thing. So if you’re not able to commit 110% to your fitness, what’s the point of doing it at all? And completely, to be complete honest, when you’re having a kid, you’re not always able to be there 110% because, you know, it’s taking time away from your family and giving back to your child, which you should be. Yeah, for sure.
And just remember that you’re not lazy. You just have decision fatigue from your kids and like figuring out what they’re going to wear. You have fatigue from, and you’re just tired in general from having to wake up in the middle of the night for your crying toddler.
Like there’s so many reasons why you feel the way that you feel. And it’s not that just, you know, there’s something going on in your brain and you’re just like a lazy person. It’s just more difficult for parents to start a fitness routine or to just even stay on a fitness routine.
So, you know, back when in the day before I had kids, like I used to always be like, man, I just don’t get it. You know, you could just drop your kid off at a daycare and you could just work out, you know, but now that I have three kids, I do totally understand why a lot of parents do end up falling off their fitness routines. And, uh, I can definitely relate, but I mean, I mean, obviously for me, I’ve never stopped doing it.
There have been periods where I worked out less, but because I found out like, what is my bare minimum that I can do to still stay on track? That’s what made it everything so much easier for me. Totally. And whether you like it or not, adding exercise to your life is a stressor and, you know, having a child is one of the most stressful things you can do in your life.
You know, like you mentioned, there are a lot of decisions that go on throughout the day and it’s just adding an extra stressor into your day could be something that’s overloading you throughout your entire week or your day that makes you not really want to be there. But if we were to give some, you know, basic elements of what it would be to kind of keep a fitness routine, a bare minimum, what would that be in your opinion? I always think that the best thing that you can do is just walk because you know, there’s many reasons for one, of course, it’s going to be easier for you to lose weight or maintain your weight. It’s going to be just like an extra little bit of cardio, an extra little bit exercise, but it also has the potential of moving into something bigger as well.
So if you’re walking 10 minutes a day, it can turn into 20 minutes. It can turn into 30 minutes. And then you never know, maybe down the line, you can be like, Hey, maybe now I can actually fit in a workout and go to the gym on your own.
Right? So that’s why I really do like walking as a bare minimum protocol because it can, and like the setup for it is very simple. You put on your shoes and you exit your house, you know, and just walk and do a loop and then come back. I remember, uh, back in the day when my wife had, uh, our newborn, she would just put on her shoes and she would just take her out and just literally walk around and like in our, our block, you know, so she can get a little bit of air.
And also my daughter could get a little bit of air and, uh, yeah, it was very simple to do, you know, you don’t need anything. And I think what you said there makes a lot of sense too, because this is something that you can include your family into. It’s not even just for only yourself, even though it does benefit you, it benefits the whole family when it’s going for a walk.
And the funny thing is, is I’ve been doing something very similar and it just basically starts off with me looking out the window and being like, Hey, it’s a really nice day out there. Let’s just, let’s grab some sun. So I grabbed my daughter and we were talking about this before the podcast.
I’ll just literally just grab her and hold her. As I walk around the block and back forth, look at some trees and it’s progressive over overload week by week. She gets heavier, heavier object every week.
Yeah, it’s true. And, uh, the thing is also for them when they get older, um, it’s just going to be a part of their routine. And then eventually they’re going to be like, she’s going to be able to walk and then she’s going to be walking with you instead of like holding your hand and it can just be part of a family routine as well.
So there’s many benefits to just having simple walking in your routine, even as a parent. But I would say the next best thing is, uh, focusing on protein just as a bare minimum protocol, just focusing on protein rich meals would be like the number one thing. As soon as somebody starts focusing on just like, like not even eating healthier or anything, but just eating more protein, it makes your diet significantly better, you know, 100% because that protein is going to satiate you a lot more throughout the day.
It’s going to inherently kind your calories for the most part, uh, rather than filling it with just carbs and fats, but is also going to give you the substance to actually maintain that lean muscle mass, even if you’re not exercising as much as you normally would. And this is going to be something that I looked into great in my daughter’s life too. Like it’s always protein forward for even her meals too.
And then the third thing that I really focusing on is my sleep. Of course, we’ve talked about this in so many podcasts, but the one thing that I think is a really good idea for parents, instead of just like looking at your time after your kids go to bed as like time for you to relax, which usually means like watching TV or like scrolling on your phone or something, um, using that time and just dimming the lights in your house all the way down and using candles to light instead. So what we did in our house is actually, we got a electronic candles and, uh, because then, you know, that never runs out and a while other than the battery, but, but it’s really easy to just turn on at night.
And then now you have all, it’s very dim in our house and you put on the blue light blocking glasses. And, uh, then you can just, you know, be in a very dark environment. It’s going to make you sleepy as opposed to keeping all of your lights on and, uh, like going on your phone and scrolling through your phone or like watching Netflix or something, because the idea is like, you do want that time to relax.
Right. And if you’re watching TV and like under bright lights, it’s not going to make you relax. It’s going to do the exact opposite.
It’s going to keep you up. And that’s why people end up staying up for like 10 o’clock, 11 o’clock, 12 o’clock, 1, 2 AM. And then now you’re too tired the next day to go to bed.
But if you’re, let’s say your kids go to bed at nine, you dim all the lights even before that at eight o’clock, get them sleepy, right? By 10 o’clock, you’re going to be too tired to be continuous scrolling on your phone, you know, and you’re going to go to bed at a reasonable time. That’s like literally one of the best things to do to solve sleep issues for yourself. And then also for your family as well, especially if you’re a new parent, you know, that your sleep is probably going to be a little bit more intermittent and not as long as it normally would be if you didn’t have a kid.
So you need to make sure that the time that you actually are sleeping is of quality rather than trying to, you know, fit something in by the end of the day that would ruin your actual sleep. And what better way to do that than to have a wind down, like an actual wind down? Like it’s so crazy to me that people would just go from staring at their phone, like blue screen to bed, you know, it’s like, obviously it’s not working for you. Yeah.
Your body thinks it’s staring at the sun to being like, okay, settle down, get some Zs. Yeah. So that’s a, one of the best things, like tips for families just dim the lights.
In fact, one of the best, like all of these tips are just for general people, but like, this is a bare minimum protocol for parents and it’s such an easy way to get your kids to fall asleep. And also for you to fall asleep. But yeah, those are three different things that you could do as a bare minimum protocol, uh, for families.
Anything else that you want to throw in? And just because this is the bare minimum doesn’t mean you can’t do more, but this is something that you at least just hold until you have the capacity to do more. And before you know it, you’ll be back to doing a full exercise program just like you normally did. Or even for people who didn’t have a full exercise protocol, this is like a good start, you know? A hundred percent.
Yeah. So this is just the bare minimum for everyone. But yeah, hope you guys liked that episode and we’ll see you in the next one.
See ya.