Summary

The article outlines three practical strategies for integrating exercise into a busy lifestyle, emphasizing that even short, consistent workouts can significantly improve health.

Abstract

The article titled "3 Easy Ways to Fit Exercise Into Your Busy Schedule" provides simple strategies for individuals with hectic lifestyles to incorporate fitness into their routine. It highlights the benefits of resistance training, noting that just 30–60 minutes a week can reduce health risks. The article encourages readers to recognize all forms of physical activity as beneficial, including everyday tasks like taking the stairs or playing with children. It advises against an all-or-nothing approach to exercise, stressing the importance of consistency over perfection. Additionally, it introduces the concept of "movement snacks," suggesting brief, frequent exercise sessions throughout the day to build strength and muscle mass without intense effort.

Opinions

The author believes that a lack of time should not be an excuse for skipping exercise, suggesting that small increments of physical activity can lead to "massive results."
The article cites the detrimental effects of an all-or-nothing mindset, advocating for the value of any amount of exercise over none at all.
Consistency in exercise is emphasized as more important than the length or intensity of individual workouts, with the belief that efforts compound over time.
The concept of "greasing the groove" is presented as a time-efficient method for strength and muscle gain, involving multiple low-intensity sets of an exercise throughout the day.
The author promotes flexibility and adaptability in training routines, suggesting that workouts can be modified to fit into one's life, even during travel or disruptions to normal routines.
The author encourages readers to sign up for a free weekly newsletter, "Momentum," which offers new health habits to try, reinforcing the article's theme of incremental health improvements.

3 Easy Ways to Fit Exercise Into Your Busy Schedule

Simple strategies for incorporating fitness into a hectic lifestyle.

Finding time to exercise can be challenging.

So many people work long hours, have long commutes, and have numerous other responsibilities.

Fortunately, we don’t need to do a whole lot in order to stay healthy. It turns out that just 30–60 minutes of resistance training per week is enough to reduce your risk of all-cause mortality, cardiovascular disease, and cancer.

(Here is a study explaining this in more detail, if you’re interested: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35228201/).

This means you could do just 5 minutes a day and still see massive results!

Don’t let a lack of time be an excuse to skip exercise.

Here are 3 strategies you can use to exercise even when you don’t have time.

1. Everything Counts

In terms of the 30–60 minutes mentioned above, everything counts.

You don’t need to be in the gym for exercise to count.

Things like

Walking up the stairs
Doing chores
Playing with your kids or grandkids

All count as exercise. So you might be getting more exercise than you think.

You can leverage this by taking the stairs instead of the elevator, mowing your own lawn instead of having someone else do it, and getting down on the floor with your kids to play.

Start looking for opportunities to get your 30–60 minutes in.

2. Avoid the All-or-Nothing Mindset

“Too often, we fall into an all-or-nothing cycle with our habits. The problem is not slipping up; the problem is thinking that if you can’t do something perfectly, then you shouldn’t do it at all.” — James Clear

This mindset is detrimental to our progress, and to our health in general.

Thinking that if you can’t do a 2-hour gym session, or a 90-minute yoga session, or a week straight of fitness classes means you shouldn’t work out at all, you’re going to run into some problems.

Exercise is about consistency — your efforts compound over time.

Holding on to this all-or-nothing mindset makes it really hard to stay consistent. You can’t be consistent if you skip your workout every time you can’t do your normal session.

Your workout doesn’t need to be perfect every time for it to be worthwhile.

If you only have 20 minutes today instead of an hour, 20 minutes is a whole lot better than 0 minutes.

If you’re traveling and don’t have access to a gym, doing bodyweight movements or going out for a walk or run is a whole lot better than doing nothing.

Let go of the rigidity. Training is malleable. It doesn’t have to look a certain way to be beneficial.

Whenever you’re injured, sick, low on energy or time, or are away from your normal routine, remember that doing something is always better than doing nothing
Your workouts don’t have to look a certain way to be beneficial. We need to cultivate flexibility and adaptability in our training to ensure that even when life gets in the way, we’re still making progress and striving toward our goals.
Build consistency and see how your results compound over time. Build an identity as someone who gets their training done, even when life throws them a curveball.

3. Movement Snacks

Pavel Tsatsouline came up with the idea of “greasing the groove”. This is where you do a few reps of a movement multiple times over the course of the day, and stay way below what you’re capable of.

This strategy helps you build both strength and muscle mass with very little time commitment and now intense efforts.

For example, a common way to do this is to put a pull up bar in a doorway you walk through often. Every time you walk through, you do 1–5 pull ups. Over the course of a day, you might do 50 or more total pull ups. This is more than enough to improve your health, get stronger, and gain muscle.

You could also do some push ups, sit ups, or bodyweight squats each time you go to the bathroom.

Want to transform your health, one habit at a time?

Sign up for my free weekly newsletter, Momentum. Each week you’ll receive one new habit to try. I’ll explain why it’s important and how to make it easy. This newsletter will help you to create the momentum you need to move towards a healthier and happier future.