I know. You are busy. Believe me, I know the feeling. It can be hard to find time to exercise, right? Even though we all know that it is important. And it is also hard to find time for other important things, like meditate, cook healthy meals and volunteer in your community. Read here how you can save an hour every day so you can do more or rest more. But for now, allow me to give you some tips on how to find time to exercise. First of all, it helps to know how much exercise you actually need.
How Much Exercise You Need
There have been many studies into how much exercise you need. The results and conclusions are basically the same every time. General guidelines regarding the minimum exercise requirements for healthy adults are:
- 2.5 to 5 hours per week of moderate physical activity. The easiest way to achieve this is to reserve 30 minutes a day for exericse. What you need to do is get your heart pumping. You could try some good workouts at home. Or even just go for on a brisk walk each day if you do not have time for anything else.
- High-intensity aerobic physical activity 3 days a week for 20 minutes. This could be jogging, cycling on a gym bike or doing exercises like the ones in this YouTube video a few times a week. (Feel free to click but do come back to read the rest of this article. It is for your own benefit, I promise.)
- If 30 minutes of exercise is too much, you are allowed to divide your exercise into 10 minute chunks. The health result will still be great.
This basically means that you only need 10 to 30 minutes per exercise to get great results. That’s not too bad, is it? In fact, I am sure everyone can find time for 10 minute exercise sessions. Here are 5 tips on how to find time to exercise.
1. Turn Off the TV to Find Time to Exercise
The average adult watches over 30 hours of TV every week. This includes Netflix and other streaming services. Sounds like a good place to start a small change. You could easily get in 5 hours of exercise a week and still watch over an entire day’s worth of TV. If watching TV is too hard to quit you can even exercise while you watch!
2. Limit Your Time Online
For most people, screen time is not just TV but smartphone and laptop too. We all spend a lot of time surfing the Internet, checking email, browsing through Facebook and Instagram feeds and watching video’s on YouTube. Do you know how much time you spend on your phone?
For example, do you start your day by going through all your messages? And then get lost in them? Before you know it an hour has passed and you still didn’t really start the day. If that sounds familiar, why not try a different approach instead. Leave your phone alone after you wake up. Literally do not pick it up besides turning off your alarm. Start your day with 15 minutes of exercise after getting up. And do not check your messages until after you finish. Easy!
3. Delegate to Find Time
Of course there are many other things that can keep you busy besides TV and your phone. Maybe you have a really busy job and family life and many responsibilities. That too can make it hard to find time to exericse. The trick could be to just simply ask someone to help you out. Maybe you can arrange with your partner to take care of some chores or watch your kids while you go work out. Depending on how old there are you can maybe delegate some chores to your kids, like cleaning or folding laundry and other things.
4. Find 10 Minute Chunks of Time
As I wrote in the beginning, if 30 minutes of exercise is too hard for you to arrange you can even chop it up into 10 minute chunks. What can you do in 10 minutes? A lot! You can go for a fast walk after each of your meals. That would be good for your digestion too. You could also do 10-minute exercises at home like push-ups and sit-ups, etc. Ten minutes are not enough to go to a gym. But you can do a lot of exercise with just your bodyweight. In fact, that is what calisthenics is all about: exercising with you own body weight.
5. Exercise On the Go
You probably have to go to several places each day. Your office, the supermarket, visiting family or taking the kids to school. You can use all these opportunities for some exercise. For example, leave your car at home and walk to your local supermarket instead. Or cycle to visit friends or family and to work or to run errands. There is a lot you can do in 10 minutes to get your heart beating faster!
As you can see, it does not have to be hard to get in some exercise. Really, 2.5 to 5 hours a week is not a lot. If exercise is something you do not look forward to then there is only one way to approach this. That is to simply start anyway. Today. And not let any days pass anymore without at least 10 to 30 minutes of exercise. After just one or two weeks you will notice the results. Just 30 minutes of exercise has a profound impact on your brain and thinking ability. Your mind will be more focused. Your body will feel better. And you will have more energy. Try it and and see for yourself. It is worth it.
