We’ve talked about the reasons to exercise and the need for consistency in your fitness program. Now, I want to give you 10 tips to help you find the time to perform your exercise – this important – because the most common reason I have ever heard from individuals about why they don’t exercise is: I don’t have time.
10 Tips to Finding Time to Exercise
- Learn to Moderate Your Commitments – Helping out others is great and volunteering is admirable, but if you over commit yourself, you will find your time evaporating. It is important to take the time to take care of you in order to meet these other commitments, so learn to say no to some things
- Walking Your Kids to School – If you are fortunate enough to live close enough to walk your kids back and forth to school and weather permitting, this is a great way to incorporate fifteen to twenty minutes in the morning and the afternoon to walking to and from the school
- Sleep is vital component to health, but if you get up 30 minutes earlier in the morning, you give yourself a 30 minute window in which to exercise before showering and starting your day
- Go to bed 30 Minutes Early – Instead of staying up to catch the late show, try recording it to watch it in the morning when you work out and get some extra sleep to help you get up earlier in the morning
- Have Little Ones that Like the Park? There’s a couple of great parks around here where I see parents taking their kids and then walking circuits around the playground – this lets them get in their exercise while the kids play and they are never out of sight
- Do Interval Training Around the House – Housecleaning, gardening and chores are all physical activities – make the most of them – do lunges while vacuuming – focus on deep stretches while gardening and practice lifting with your legs while doing chores
- Reset Your Priorities – A great time management tool is to sit down and keep track of the time you spend in your day doing various activities – re-evaluating your priorities can help you find the time you need
- Want to Exercise – Seriously, by giving yourself a reason to exercise and assessing what you hold to be valuable to yourself – you will be more likely to want to exercise and the desire to exercise will help you find the time
- Get a Partner/Buddy/Personal Trainer – Having someone else to exercise with whether it’s your best friend or co-working walking with you at lunch or a personal trainer meeting with you two times a week to hit your fitness goals can be a great motivator and by scheduling the time – you are making time
- Keep an Exercise Journal – Write down the various activities you do during the day as well as the duration that you perform them. This can help you to assess if you have 10 or 15 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon and 10 minutes in the evening – time you could then maximize your fitness benefits from. Ultimately, you may find you have a lot more time than you realized
Related Articles:
Putting Yourself on a Schedule: The Solution to Overwhelm
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Fitness Tips: Need More Hours In Your Day?