As a personal trainer with over 14 years experience I would rate the most frequent excuse I get from clients who do not workout enough or eat well balanced meals is, "I don't have enough time". Even people in tremendous chronic pain, cannot seem to fit in time to do stretches or exercises they need to do to get out of pain. Almost as if the pain is not enough of a motivator. But why is this? Is it because we are all lazy? I don't think so, in fact there are many reasons for this which we will explore in this article and endeavor to give you some great ideas and suggestions on how you don't actually need to find more time, instead you need to become smarter with your usage and be clear on what you want. In a perfect world, we'd all have at least an hour a day to devote to our fitness. But in the real world, we know that for many of us this is unrealistic and 24 hours does not even seem nearly enough time to fit in work, home chores and family commitments yet alone workouts. Let's see if we can give you some good ideas and solutions to help you out.
How Many Hours Are Available In The Week?
Time is valuable and something we all would like more at times. Is it more time we really need or is it that we need to learn how to use it better? The very first thing to do if you are one of the people who never seems to have time to exercise is to actually define where your time is being spent. We all have just 168 hours in the week that you can spend on activities, sleeping, work etc. You simply cannot do more than 168 hours of “stuff” in a week, and the following exercise will help you see where you might be wasting time in areas and neglecting time in others. This will help you reflect on what your priorities really are and consider reducing or cutting commitments that are not as important to you. Okay let's have a look to see how to do this.
First define what is daily, weekly and monthly tasks.
Daily Tasks 7 days a week
- Sleep. 8 hours.
- Hygiene. 1.5 hours.
- Meals. .5 hours (if I’m just eating at home, this is the fastest it can get)
- Total – 10 hours
Weekday Tasks (5 days per week)
Consider a “normal” weekday work week Work to be 10 hours. This could include lunch and/or travel time break.
Weekly time used so far:
- Daily Tasks: 10 x 7 = 70 hours
- Weekday: 10 x 5 = 50 hours
Total weekly time used = 70 + 50 = 120 hours
Weekly Tasks
- Time with friends and family - 15 hours. This might include watching TV, playing with the dog and going out with friends.
- Grocery shopping and cooking - 10 hours.
- Home chores - 6 hours (cleaning, gardening, and general maintenance, etc)
Total weekly time used = 120 + 31 = 151 hours
Monthly Tasks
- Monthly Tasks. This could be something that you might not do every week but regularly comes up for example birthday parties, celebrations, work get together, doctors check up etc. I might allow for 1 hour to be added to my weekly budget giving me an
Total weekly time used = 151 hours + 1 hour = 152 hours.
Total Time Remaining To Exercise
168 total hours - 152 hours = 16 hours to workout.
Wow 16 hours! You can get a lot done in 16 hours considering that you only need to do 3-4 hours of strength training in a week to get ripped this still leaves you with 12 hours to do some cardio, walking and maybe play sports. Obviously this will vary from person to person but you need to be very honest with yourself as to where you spending your time. If you find you have not much time left, you need to start calculating how much time some of these tasks actually require. Things like sleep, eating, family time and of course exercise are necessities and should not be compromised for watching TV. Socializing is important but we must be careful of over indulging and compromising our health as a result.
One thing I will say here is that you must get very clear on this one fact. If you don't make time for health, health will make time for you! Meaning neglecting and ignoring health principles will eventually force you into working on your health by providing you with an illness or worse disease. And trying to apply health principles then will be much harder. You will find some great tips on how to do this in the video below.
Ways To Find More Time
There is many ways you can be a bit savvy with your time to fit in more exercise, you just need to be creative and you need to break some bad habits. Here is some ideas to try.
- Change your work travel to exercise by riding to work or parking further from the train station so you have to walk.
- Fit in a walk at lunchtime or even better do walking meetings.
- Set your alarm 30 minutes earlier and get a quick workout in before you start your day. (A great book to read about exactly this and something that has changed the lives of millions is called "The Miracle Morning" by Hal Elrod)
- Fit in small workouts of 1-5 minutes in small bursts at work. See below for a great idea on how to do this.
What I often find when I do this exercise with people is that it is obvious we can find time, they just find ways to fill it with something else other than exercise. They do not prioritize exercise as highly as they should, and this is often because they are not clear on their GOALS and WHY they want to be healthy and fit. If your goal is getting out of pain then your why is very clear. But you MUST write it down to make it official. Goal setting is so important and cannot be neglected.
Before getting into workout ideas read our article Motivation, Willpower and Changing Habits to see how you can get crystal clear on what you need to do and also download a Goal Setting Worksheet.
If you are going through rehab and needing to do home exercises and stretches to get out of pain, you also need to write down what will happen if you do not do your exercises. Being clear on the consequence of not doing what your therapist or trainer has advised will help you see the need to getting these exercises completed.
If Exercise Is Fun You Are More Likely To Do It
When you have a workout to do but you know it is not fun, and you are just doing it because you know you should, there is a high chance you will procrastinate and find a way to avoid it. This does not mean you don't do the things you need to do, you just need to be creative in how you structure things to be done. When it comes to winter time it is easy to avoid going outside because it is so cold, wet and also gets dark very early. All great excuses to avoid exercising. But what about working out in your own home. Again excuses like "I don't have any room, or I don't have any equipment" are very common. As you will see shortly you don't need much of either of these to have a very effective workout.
But by far one of the easiest ways to make exercise fun and also hold you accountable to getting it done is working out with a friend or partner.
There has been countless studies performed on the value of buddy training with some astounding results. "Study participants experienced 100%better weight loss and fitness results, dropping kilos faster and keeping them off longer, when they teamed up with a buddy with whom they have an existing relationship." - Rena Wing, PhD behavioral scientist, Brown University, Founder, National Weight Control Registry.
"Study participants reported significantly greater weight loss, health and fitness results when they had the support of family and friends." - "Study participants who actively enlisted the social support of 3 or more friends experienced 176%greater long term success with their exercise and nutrition program than those who tried to do it on their own." - Wing, R. R., & Jeffery, R.W. (1999). Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 67(1), 132-138.
"Building asocial support network can be THE determining factor (to your fitness and weight loss success). You need people who will hold you to your agreements." - St. John, B. (2003). Build a support SYSTEM. Shape Magazine.
It's one thing getting lazy and missing your own workout, but it is much, much harder to ditch a workout when you know you are going to be letting your workout buddy down! Not to mention the what they are going to say when you are going to get when you see them again. In addition to this, having a workout partner means you have to plan your workouts in advance to meet each other's schedules, and once it is down on paper and scheduled, it is much more likely that you are going to follow through with it. Other great advantages to training with a buddy include it adds variety to your workouts, ensures you keep it safer as you have a spotter to help you, makes it easier to try new things, and last but not least it can be a lot more fun.
To show you just how much fun it can be here is a great video showing you 10 of our best buddy exercises and how you can turn this into a home workout.
What If You Don't Have A Workout Partner?
Well this is many things you can do in the comfort of your own lounge room that do not require much equipment or even a lot of time to get a lot out of it.
I suggest reading our article Home Workouts Are Great For Winter to get some good ideas and other ways to train in your own home. The only equipment you really need is maybe a mat, swissball and rubber band. With just these pieces of equipment combined with body weight exercises you can create many fun and very challenging exercise programs. In fact some of the hardest exercises we use with professional elite athletes are body weight so do not underestimate the benefit these exercises provide. Below is 2 videos showing a simple home workout and also one featuring resistance bands and rubber tubing exercises you can use.
Need More Ideas?
If you still need more ideas and different ways to exercise that are not only challenging but extremely fun then you can get a copy of our Little Black Book Of Training Secrets that has over 100 different workouts for all types of goals and needs. Click here to find out more or go straight to the online shop to get your copy now by clicking the image below.
There is also stacks of FREE REPORTS you can download instantly by clicking here.
Summary
Now you should have a stack of ideas on how you can fit in more exercise and get yourself closer to your health and fitness goals. The time management exercise at the beginning is often a real wake up call to many people and a great way for them to change many of the bad habits sabotaging their health. Making your exercise more fun and working out with friends is a great way to getting more done and actually looking forward to doing it instead of looking at exercise as a chore and something you have to do. All the people who get great results look at exercise as fun, as a way of life and something they never neglect or ignore. No matter how busy they are they still find time to fit it in as they know how important it is. See TESTIMONIALS for hundreds of examples of this. If you are a person who never finds time you need to assess what is important to you and find a way to adjust your schedule to fit exercise in.
For if you don't make time for health, it will eventually make time for you!
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