To get the most from your workout, health professionals advise working out for half an hour to an hour every day. But what if your work schedule or other factors don’t leave you that much time to devote to exercise?
Identify New Opportunities
Maybe you can’t rearrange your schedule to accommodate your workout, but you can certainly change your exercise plans to fit into your day. Fitness professional Ann Grandjean says that getting off the sofa and working around the house is a great way to get in shape. Cleaning, gardening, and any other chores will burn calories and move you closer to your fitness goals.
Use Your Time Wisely
A couple of 10-minute windows in your day may not seem like enough time to get a good workout, but a recently conducted study suggests differently. It determined that men and women who took 10-minute walks or engaged in other exercise for a similar amount of time had a higher probability of exercising regularly. Also, they lost more weight on the whole than participants who worked out in 1-hour intervals.
The Professional Consensus
In Virginia, exercise physiologist Glenn Gaesser recently conducted a study in which subjects exercised for 10 minutes at a time. He determined that 15 sets of 10-minute workouts caused those who did them to essentially turn back time. Participants who followed this regimen were rewarded after one month when Gaesser found that their levels of fitness matched those of men and women 20 years their junior.
Splitting exercise into smaller blocks during your busy days can build your confidence, says time management consultant Harold Taylor. Missing out on regular gym sessions shoots down your momentum and motivation. You may surmise that fitness training isn’t worth pursuing anymore because you just don’t have the time for it. However, if you can manage to squeeze in some exercise opportunity any way you find it, however small it is, it somehow encourages you to hang in there and stay on.
Just a Supplement
Breaking up your workout into more manageable blocks is a great idea, but it can’t replace a solid, comprehensive exercise routine. For those who find it difficult to make time for a regular trip to the gym, try some of the following to give yourself a more thorough workout. Remember, what’s important is that you do it regularly.
- * When you pick up the morning paper, take a quick 5-minute walk up the street and back again.
- * If you work from home or take a day off because your child is sick, take a ride on the exercise bike or make use of the treadmill.
- * Jump rope or do jumping jacks. This burns as much as 90 calories in 10 minutes.
- * When cooking dinner, do some standing push-ups while waiting for the roast to cook. Push in and push out to tone your arms and shoulders.
- * Play games with your kids during the afternoon. Kickball and croquet are good for younger children. Older kids will enjoy playing football or other sports.
- * Take a hint from exercise instructor Sheila Cluff, who stores dumbbells in her bathroom so she can do a few sets before bedtime. Cluff is a professional fitness expert at The Palms in Palm Springs, CA.
- * Walk around the field while your son has a baseball practice.