Posted on June 28, 2021 by Kate Halsall

“There’s not enough time in the day”. How many of you find yourself saying this often, especially when it comes to finding time out of your busy schedule to exercise. It can be quite overwhelming trying to fit in training sessions when you have such a busy life. Often people find themselves being stuck in the same cycle, whether that’s just completing cardio sessions, completing the same session over and over, or worse case, giving up and stopping training altogether. Following this, results may take a back seat and begin to slow down, frustrations rise, and the vicious cycle begins… “I’ll start back on Monday”, or “I’ll be okay when ‘X, Y & Z’ is finished”. What this blog will show you is that you CAN achieve the results you want, even when short on time.

Needing to exercise every day for a minimum of one hour to achieve results is a huge misconception, when the reality is you should exercise when you can and based on what you want to achieve with your own personal goals. It is extremely easy to get sucked into the social media black hole of believing hours of exercise each day is acceptable when deep down we know it’s totally unrealistic.

So, if you are someone who struggles with time, rather than finding more time (because let’s face it, there is no more time to find!) what you really need to do is maximise your training spent in the time available. That’s right, make the most out of your time!

With less time spent training there won’t be enough time to spend ‘faffing’ around with exercises, instead choose exercises that give you the most out of it, don’t choose any with a low rate of return! A few examples with a high rate of return could be:

  • Deadlifts
  • Squats
  • Pressing exercises
  • Pulling exercises
  • Lunge variations

The best part is, all of these exercises have so many different variations which you can change to keep it interesting. Planning your workouts in advance not only gives you structure and a plan to progress overtime, but it saves time when at the gym – so you’re not spending time thinking about what to do next and how to do that exercise. You will be in and out in no time! Setting a structure can seem like hard work but really its pretty straightforward! Make sure to keep enough time for an adequate warm up and cool down and take a look at one of our previous blogs ‘Top tips for planning your training’. And if after all this you decide you don’t have time to plan – we can always plan a session for you!

Add in supersets/ trisets and even giant sets! These are basically two/ three or more exercises performed back-to-back without a rest (until all are completed); so they not only save on time but increase that intensity too. You can also plan on using exercises that use the same muscle groups or opposite muscle groups. It all adds up! Here’s a great example of a superset workout from a previous blog.

So rather than admitting defeat and thinking you don’t have enough time, utilise that time to get the most out of it. Remember that it’s ok to take breaks and if you choose to use those breaks to get some exercise in, then great! Don’t let your busy schedule get in the way of achieving the results you want.

Beth x