Dads in the Limelight – Superfitdads founder and Father of Two, Tim Blake

I’m a 46-year-old strength coach based in Niseko, Japan and am the owner and founder of Superfitdads.com. I have a bachelor’s degree in engineering and worked as an automotive engineer for over 10 years until I had my fill of the corporate world.  At the height of the GFC, I quit the security of my government job and moved to a remote ski town in northern Japan.  While that might sound completely crazy, it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

My name is Tim Blake and I hail from Bristol, England and my wife is from Nagoya, Japan. We met in 2000 when I was doing automotive test work in Japan, and had a long-distance relationship for close to two years. We got married in 2002, and have two young sons, James (8) and Noah (6).

Not sleeping properly for two years after our first son was born – I don’t know how we survived :). Seriously though, the largest challenge has also been the greatest gift. Becoming a father has made me realize my own shortcomings, and – as hard as they may be to acknowledge – doing that has helped me to become a better husband and father in particular, and a better person in general. Thanks to my children, I question my own values and beliefs a lot more readily these days, and that has had a major benefit on both how I perceive others and how I perceive myself.

4) What advice would you give to other fathers?

The older our children become, the more we should see them as equals, and the relationship should be based on mutual respect rather than merely shared DNA.

Our job is to guide them so that they can make good decisions based on sound judgment, not to condition them so that they make the decisions that we would have made.

When I worked in engineering, I was putting in crazy hours with a lot of overseas travel, and I realized that wasn’t compatible with the kind of family life I wanted.

These days, my life is very simple: I work, I spend time with my family, and I sleep. Fortunately, I love what I do, it’s very social and I’m able to fit my working hours around my family commitments. This didn’t just happen by accident – my wife and I first envisioned the kind of life we wanted for our family, and the past few years have been spent working towards it.

When I talk about fatherhood with my friends, we all realize that we’re pretty much making it up as we go along, and that mistakes are inevitable. We remind each other that the most important thing is to recognize the mistake and make every effort to avoid repeating it in future. Lastly, we all agree that admitting mistakes (even to our children) isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.

In many ways, we can learn as much from our kids as they can from us. How many adults have the same relentless commitment and optimism for tackling and mastering something new that a child has? Very few. Kids tend to live in the present, while adults tend to be focused on some arbitrary point down the track when they’ll finally give themselves permission to be happy. I’m grateful to my kids for waking me up to the simple pleasures to be found in everyday life.

8) What have been the most memorable experiences that you have had thus far as a parent?