Squeezing Workouts into your Hectic Schedule

Between work, cooking, hanging out with friends and family and just life in general, my schedule is hectic! I also workout about six times a week so needless to say, fitting this into my schedule can sometimes be difficult. One thing that got me going to the gym though was not allowing myself to make excuses. It was always something...I need to clean the house tonight, it’s too late now, or I’ll go tomorrow. Once you don’t allow yourself all of the bogus excuses, you’ll see that you’ll actually go! There are times though when you really don’t have time to go to the gym or do a full workout, but there are easy ways to get a quick workout in.

One thing I started doing was walking a mile at work at some point during the day. We are in such a sedentary society now, so these mile walks throughout the day really do make a difference. It takes me about 20 minutes, but if you don’t have that much time to spare at work, even a 5-10 minute walk will do you some good!

If you have longer than 20 minutes at work, consider going to the gym during your lunch hour. Sometimes you don’t want to get up early for a workout and after work you may be too tired. There are many workout classes offered at gyms around lunch time and it’s a convenient way to get some exercise in. This isn’t something I particularly like (unless it’s yoga) because I don’t like getting sweaty during work hours, but I know plenty of people who do this and it works for them!

Ever make plans around 7pm after work? That awkward time where you don’t really have time to run to the gym and you’re sure not going to go after your plans. Do a workout video at home! Workout videos are my jam! Throw on a 20-30 minute cardio workout video on YouTube and you’ll see how quickly you can burn some calories. This saves the 20-30 minutes it would take you to drive to and from the gym and you’ll have plenty of time to make your plans at 7pm.

Lastly, create a HIIT workout for home. Come up with 8 exercises, focusing on one particular part of the body or you can do a mixture to get a full body workout, and do each exercise for 40 seconds with 10 second rests in between. You’ll do 3 sets of this and you get a full workout in less than 30 minutes. I get awesome exercises from Ashlen Sandefur’s instagram page, @ashlensandefur. She has tons of videos and targets so many areas of the body. She’s also local!