If You Don’t Have Time To Work Out…

It’s easy to think “I don’t have time to exercise” and mean it. It’s easy to procrastinate things until that “starting tomorrow” is six months later. After all, exercise can be done tomorrow whereas many other tasks need to be done today. However, there are still ways we can carve out time for exercise, without sacrificing other things (including sleep etc!). Here’s how:

Bit by bit

The trick is to create momentum by starting small and designing workouts around limited time. For example:

• Temptation bundling: this works the same for a shortage of time as it does for a shortage of motivation. The idea is to pair workouts with low-energy leisure activities (e.g. watching TV, scrolling social media).
• Exercise snacking: take short movement breaks during the day (e.g. 5 minutes between other activities). Each may seem almost irrelevant by itself, but small efforts add up and help build momentum and consistency.
• Focus on frequency first: daily short sessions (10–15 min) are better for habit formation than occasional long workouts, which helps you to build a routine and makes it easier to scale up later.

Then, once you are having dedicated exercise sessions, make the most out of them (but still in a sustainable fashion):

• Set a timer: structure your workout to fit the available time (e.g. 5, 10, or 15 minutes). Timers also create focus and make workouts more efficient; you’ll no longer be getting distracted between sets.
• Use compound movements: focus on exercises that work multiple muscle groups (e.g. squats, push-ups, rows). This allows more muscle engagement and calorie burn in less time.
• Avoid working to failure: perhaps counterintuitive since you’re looking to get the most out of each exercise, but there’s logic here: pushing to exhaustion will tend to lead to sacrificing form, and will increase recovery times. Now, there are reasons why training to exhaustion can be beneficial, but while you’re still at the point of just trying to find enough time to exercise? That’s not the time for training to exhaustion and taking 48 hours to recover.

For more on all of these things, enjoy:

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Want to learn more?

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Take care!