How To Get More Exercise When You're Short on Time

You know that more exercise is good for you, but you may have trouble finding time in your busy schedule to work out. The good news is that you may not need as much exercise as you think you do. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that adults get a minimum of 75 minutes of intense exercise per week or 150 minutes of moderate exercise. That works out to 15 to 30 minutes of aerobic activity per day, which should be fairly easy to accomplish by grabbing your SixThreeZero Ride in the Park a few times per week or otherwise getting creative. Here are some other ideas to make time for exercise.

Commute to Work on Your Bicycle

The average one-way commute in the United States is approximately 28 minutes. That means that every day, you probably spend about an hour getting to and from work. If you ride your bike to work instead of driving, you can make better use of your time by getting in a workout. In a week of riding to work on your commuter cruiser, you get twice as much moderate exercise as the CDC recommends, burning approximately 1,000 per day in the process. Not only that, but you also help the environment by reducing your carbon footprint.

Get Your Workout in Early

In the morning, you are more refreshed and energized by your night’s rest, making it a good time to get your workout in. If you wait until you are done with work at the end of the day, you are more likely to be tired and unmotivated, making it all too easier to forgo your workout for the day and get into a pattern of missing it.

Make the Most of Television Time

Another way of multitasking to meet your fitness goals is to exercise while watching television. You can pay attention to the television while your body is occupied with something else. Furthermore, walking on a treadmill or climbing with a stair-stepper is much easier if you have something to occupy your mind while you’re doing it.

When you combine exercise and screen time, you don’t necessarily need to cut back on the latter. However, try to keep track of and gradually limit how much time you spend on your phone or computer. The internet can be a thief of time that you could spend on exercise or other productive activities.

Exercise in Short Bursts

It’s not necessarily the quantity of exercise you get that makes a difference in your life but the quality. High-intensity interval training is a technique in which you do a short burst of very high-intensity activity for a short period of time, followed by a longer cool-down period. Since they are high-intensity by their very nature, you can do 15 minutes per day and meet the CDC recommendation for weekly vigorous aerobic activity.

Bear in mind that HIIT does make you sweat. Therefore, you might not want to do it at work unless you have access to shower facilities. Otherwise, there’s no reason why it can’t become a part of a productive workday.

Modifying workouts to be shorter and more intense, getting an early start, or using your commute to get electric bike exercise are all good ways to get necessary exercise. Online retailers can help you find the equipment you need.