Friday, March 14, 2014

Fitness Fridays: Making Time for Exercise


There's no doubt that everyone seems to be pretty time-poor these days.
Whether it's technology that's to blame, high expectations of ourselves an inability to say "no", or a million other reasons...time can be tricky to manage.

At the moment, I'm pretty busy. I'm studying full time, in my last year of a double undergraduate degree. I also work part time as a manager in a retail store, and I'm working part time in a law firm. This leaves me with no days off until mid-April, when (thankfully) my work-load will lessen. I'm one of those people who struggles to say "no", and I cram so much into my days. I like to think though, that I do this without burning out. Once upon a time I didn't think too much about what consequences keeping so busy had on my health, but today I'm hyper-aware of it.
Keeping active is incredibly important to me, and something that I really enjoy so I try to make time for it.

So these are my tips for making time to exercise.

1. Write everything down.
I schedule in every single activity in my day. Every hour, every minute (within reason) is scheduled. This allows me to see where I have a couple of hours here and there as breaks. Even if I don't have hours, I have minutes and those minutes can add up to hours. Being aware of this time is the first key, I think to using time wisely. Which brings me to my next tip...

2. Multi-task when you can.
If I have 40 pages of reading to do for class, I'll get that done on the train to uni. I spend about 4 hours every day travelling to uni, and if I didn't recognise that I had that 'free time' it would get wasted. Using up these dead minutes and hours in my day means that it's one less thing I have to do when I get home, which leaves me with more free time at home. An hour spent on the train reading frees up that hour in the evening, and I can use that time to stretch or go for a run.

3. Incidental exercise.
This is a big one. I walk to the train station every day, which all up adds about 40 minutes of walking into my day. This doesn't even feel like any time since it's broken up across the day into tiny increments. Put that coffee jar on the top shelf and suddenly you're adding stretches into your morning coffee routine. Get off the bus a stop early. Always take the stairs instead of the lift. I always try to do forward bends when I get out of the shower and my muscles are all warm. Rather than bending my knee when shaving my legs, I bend at the waist and stretch out my hamstrings. It all adds up!

4. Get up an hour early
If you set the task you least want to do as your first task of the day, then the rest of the day can only improve. Waking up and exercising in the morning means it's done and dusted for the day and you don't even have to think about it. It also means you're less likely to make up excuses!

5. Work out while you watch T.V.
This is really just more multi-tasking. We usually watch an hour of television while we eat dinner. After our meal, and some time to digest I always make an effort to stretch. That way I'm still spending time with J, still getting to watch T.V, and I'm fitting in a quick stretch session. You can add in crunches, hold planks, do push ups. You really don't need equipment to work out and watching T.V. is the perfect distraction from the hard work you're doing.

6. Make an Appointment
I add in half an hour to an hour of yoga into my week by making appointments to myself. I add them into my diary, and once they're written I can't cancel it. I'm the same with attending pole classes. That's an appointment that I've paid money to attend. So I can't miss it.

What are your best tips for finding time to exercise?

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