How do you fit the time in to exercise in the midst of your busy work and home lives? Once you are out of the habit, I know it’s hard to get the motor turned back on and start exercising regularly. Many people think exercise means 60-90 minutes three times a week, at the gym or in a class. And it can be difficult to break out of that notion; it’s how most of us used to exercise. You may have adopted an all-or-nothing mentality: you know it’s impossible to exercise as much as you once did, so you stop altogether.
Here’s the big idea: Exercise counts if you do it in short bursts. A recent study by the British Journal of Sports Medicine published by University of Cambridge found that for health, the recommendation is that we exercise for 150 minutes every week. If you divide 150 minutes by five days a week, that's 30 minutes a day. If you divide that by seven days a week, that's 21 minutes a day. Not so much. But here was the biggest discovery—even if we do only 50% of the recommended dose, the health benefits are huge. An 11-minute walk every day cuts the risk of early death by almost 25%!
Once you understand that short bursts of exercise have a huge impact, you have a lot more freedom to create and maintain an exercise habit. Here are three practical actions you can take today:
Pick and Commit
Choose a short burst form of exercise that you can do in 20 minutes or less, wherever you are in the world, no matter the weather. Is it yoga stretches? Lifting hand weights? A home-based 7-minute high intensity interval training workout? Then, commit to a specific time you will do your new routine. Attaching it to an existing habit (e.g. right after making your bed in the morning or as a transition at the end of your workday), makes it easier to track and form your new habit.
Informal Exercise (a.k.a. Mindful Movement)
Exercise doesn’t have to be “formal” to count. Informal movement, done mindfully, allows you to build fitness into your everyday routines. For example, park in the furthest spot from the supermarket and add more steps as you walk to and from your car. Take the stairs instead of the elevator when you go to work or a doctor’s appointment. Do deep knee bends and stretch from the core as you unpack and put away groceries. Run around with a kid or a dog and turn relationship time into super beneficial exercise time.
Make it Social
For many, exercise can be isolating, boring, and hard to get motivated to do every day. Having an accountability partner can make the difference between following through or falling short of your goals. One participant from a recent workshop decided the only way she would keep her commitment to a daily walk every morning was to recruit a walking buddy. But what I loved about her approach was that she recruited not just one walking buddy but two–so that if the schedule ever didn’t work for one walking partner, she always had a backup. That, my friends, is knowing what you need and setting yourself up for success.
Fitting in time for exercise is so much easier (and more pleasant) than we think. By shifting our mindset to acknowledge the value of short bursts of exercise, done consistently—we can get that motor going again–and feel victorious and more healthy in the process.
Want more inspiration on fitting in time to exercise? Listen to this coaching session from my podcast episode: Exercise: How can I balance a healthy body with my responsibilities as a parent?