Are you someone who struggles to fit exercise into your day? Well fear no more as we delve into 5 easy ways you can get more exercise into your day!
1) Schedule exercise into your daily tasks
A simple yet effective tool is to make exercise an appointment just like any other commitment you have in your day. Often, we will say either I’ll work out before work or after work, then life gets in the way and exercise becomes the last thing on our to do list.
Why don’t you change this approach by blocking off a consistent time depending on your lifestyle and sticking to it.
Maybe it’s 30 minutes of you 60-minute lunch break you’ll dedicate to going for a walk or maybe you have regular tasks you normally do such as watching the TV of the night that you can habit stack and use to exercise while you watch TV.
2) Start early
Human beings are routine based animals. We love structure, consistency and making things as easy as possible. So why not start your morning routine off with exercise?
To do this I suggest making your environment supportive of this endeavour by setting up your workout clothes in an easy to see place as soon as you wake up, leave your gym shoes close to the front door, set a reminder on your phone. You get the idea.
Having an environment conducive to allowing you to exercise makes it all that much easier! There are several benefits to starting your day off with exercise as well as you will:
- Release ‘happy’ hormones such as serotonin and oxytocin which are known as mood boosting hormones
- You will feel accomplished from the get go, which will likely have a carry-on effect to other movements
- You are fresh in the morning so you’ll likely perform better (person dependent).
- You’ll get some Vitamin D exposure – something many of us fail to do, even though it is critically important for our body – immune, skeletal and metabolic systems.
3) Find a friend
Accountability is hugeeee in reaching your goals. Having a friend or family member to exercise with you will make it that much easier to actually exercise!
To be successful you simply need someone that wants to make a change in their lives as well. Motivation will come and go, some days you’ll feel completely unmotivated to exercise, enter your friend who will give you that timely kick up the butt to keep you consistent towards your goals.
Not to mention you get to socialise as well making exercise fun rather than a chore!
4) Think outside the box
Generally, people only attribute exercise to a gym session. This doesn’t have to be the case at all!
There are millions of ways to exercise, you just have to think outside the box to find the one suited to you. Maybe you will start regular rock climbing, swimming or hiking.
Maybe you can turn part of your normal household tasks into a form of exercise such as mowing the lawns, vacuuming and carrying groceries.
5) Travel-cise
This is most likely a made-up word but the gist is that on your usual commute to work, the shops, friends / family you can use this as an opportunity to exercise.
Maybe you will walk, run or cycle instead of driving. Low and behold you have exercised!
Often, we will overcomplicate our goals. I recommend starting small and building sustainable habits this will lead to long term success rather than trying to do 100 things at once and losing the motivation and stopping altogether. Check out my approach to setting sustainable goals HERE.
How have you found these exercise tips? Are there any you can implement today?
Feel free to reach out for a chat about how we can get you more active throughout your days!
Reach us at [email protected] or www.moverightep.com
