Baby can be part of a workout

HAMDEN, Conn. — Joshua Levitt, a Hamden naturopathic physician, husband and father of three, is a big appreciator of multi-tasking.

After all, life makes it nearly impossible these days for busy people to do just one thing at a time. You have to do the laundry, arrange the carpool schedule and pay the bills while dinner is cooking; shave and brush your teeth while you're taking a shower; and load the dishwasher while you're helping your kids with their homework.

It's just the way life is.

But when do busy parents have time for fitness? When, in all that multi-tasking, is there time for a workout?

This is where Levitt may be the Genius of Multitasking. (Our term for it, not his.) A few years ago, he came home from seeing patients all day, and his wife, Amanda, handed him their very cute but fussy 6-month-old baby, Sircia.

“None of the usual tricks worked to calm her down,” he says. So he got down on the floor, flat on his back, perched her on his belly and started doing what he's now calling the Baby Bench Press.

For a while it was “baby up, and baby down” — and then his daughter started to giggle — and best of all, Levitt says he started to feel the burn in his triceps. He turned to his wife and said, “Do other people know about this?”

After that, he says, he started finding all kinds of ways to incorporate fitness exercises into his routine of playing with his daughter, and he coined the term “baby barbells” to include a set of exercises that parents can do to help them interact with their infants as well as get fit.

“It is,” he says modestly, “multi-tasking at its finest. Good for the baby, good for the parent.”

And now he's written a clever book, “Baby Barbells: The Dad's Guide to Fitness and Fathering,” just published by Running Press, $13.95.

It's cleverly packaged as a boardbook, the kind given to babies, which is helpful when the baby wants to share it with you and might like to drool on it or gnaw on the corners.

It's illustrated by Matt Stevens, and has plenty of quick exercises and ideas for how dads can have fun with their kids. (Don't miss the Peek-a-boo Pop-Ups, the Tot Squats or the Lullaby Lunges.)

And while Levitt says the book never aims to preach or give advice, there's plenty of lighthearted, conversational tips on how to help babies sleep, how to bond with them, and how to keep the romance alive between mothers and fathers.

“We're in the midst of an important social change,” he says. “We have this new problem: Involved fathers are physically more present than they've ever been. But perhaps they're emotionally more distant. You see kids out in the playgrounds with their fathers, and the kids are climbing and jumping around, and the fathers are texting on their cellphones.

“I wanted to create a fun book that shows how you can stay involved, how you can do things with your kids that is going to be good for both of you.”

And that means learning to fit physical activity into everyday life, which helps children at the same time it makes for fun interactions and better health for everybody.

“I didn't invent the idea of lifting your kid up in the air,” he says with a laugh. “Fathers have been doing that for generations. My own father was really involved, and may have invented Circus Baby Tricks. But I think what this book does is show you that not only can you get your quads and biceps in shape, but you can bond with your kids in new and fun ways.”