Limited Time to Workout

Do you struggle to find the time to exercise?  It can be challenging to balance daily responsibilities and staying healthy, without spending an hour in the gym each day. If you want to make exercise a priority, take the time to map out exactly when you will workout.  This is a strong starting point to focus your weekly calendar in line with your goals.  When time is limited to 20-30 minutes, go for maximal intensity with interval training.

Reducing the amount of time you spend in the gym means performing shorter bursts of activity with greater intensity.  This way you can schedule 2-3 workouts a week.  To boost the efficiency of your workouts, try using compound exercises that require multiple muscle groups.  These are exercises such as pushups, squats, deadlifts and lunges.  You can perform a total-body routine in a short amount of time by incorporating the arms, legs and core into one exercise.  These are exercises such as squats to overhead presses, deadlifts to reverse flys, lunges with biceps curls, burpees and plank variations.  Begin with a 10-15 exercises, moving from one to the next, for 30-seconds to 1-minute at a time.  Performing your exercises with little to no rest in between will burn more calories.  See how many times you can repeat the circuit (aim for 3 x in 30-minutes).  Not only will you feel the burn in a short time frame, it is a wonderful way to keep your workouts fresh and fun.  My individualized workouts and specific packages are designed to help you fit exercise into your busy schedule.

FITT for Summer

Are you contemplating starting a new exercise program?  Perhaps you have a 5k coming up, a new weight loss goal, or maybe you heard my “Exercise and Alzheimer’s” talk and want to reduce your future risk of cognitive decline.  Regardless of your reasons, a simple tool to help you succeed is F.I.T.T.  This simple mnemonic stands for Frequency, Intensity, Time and Type.  Use FITT as you develop an exercise plan.  Frequency:  How often can you/will you exercise per week.  Intensity: What intensity is safe for you and will help you achieve your goals? Time: How long per time?  10 minutes to 2 hours.  Dependent on your schedule, goals, previous fitness etc you will map this out.  Our last T is Type:  Whether a sport (like tennis, basketball, running, soccer) or a gym routine, pilates class or the like.  This can be one of the most important decisions.  Choose something you enjoy and don’t be afraid to vary it!  You can find some great workout tips and programs in our store.  Go check them out, download a few and get moving!  Use FITT to help you succeed, and use SMART Goals to guide you!