Exercising on the Clock
Personal trainer
Paul O'Brien
The most oft-cited obstacle to engaging in regular exercise is a lack of time. The demands on our time from an increasingly busy lifestyle have led us to pigeon-hole our daily activities. We allocate time slots to each of the things we want or need to do in our day. For many people, the pigeon-hole for exercise is pretty small.
Here, I’ll construct a workable solution for busy people that will bring health benefits and also enable you to make physical activity a more-intrinsic part of your life. Let me introduce you to Breda.
Breda, in her mid 40s, is a working mother with two young teenage kids. In her younger days she was a habitual exerciser. Nowadays, she finds it extremely difficult to fit any exercise into her busy schedule.
Breda’s average day is pretty normal for a working mother. She is up every morning at 7am to sort out the kids and prepare for work. She works from 8.30am until 4pm Monday to Friday. Most weekdays she picks her kids up from school or from a friend’s house. The kids are shuttled to and from music lessons, football training and dance class most days of the week. Each evening, she’s back home at about 6.30pm. Once the family has dinner, it’s pretty close to 9pm, and she begins to wind down for the day, too tired to do much else. Weekends are packed with family activities. Time is scarce.
Breda feels that a ‘normal’ exercise programme, including long walks or lengthy periods of exercise, won’t work for her.
The answer is to incorporate bite-size chunks of physical activity into her day. This will help to establish a habit of physical activity. Once this positive habit is established, Breda may then choose to prioritise her spare time, engaging in activities she enjoys.
Here’s a workable solution for Breda:
7am – Rise and shine. Breda performs three sets of 12 repetitions of bodyweight squats and push-ups and a 30-second frontal plank. She does this as soon as she gets out of bed. It takes about three minutes, and she says it fires up her body in the morning and gets her focused on the day ahead.
11:30am – She takes a coffee break at work. Having been seated for the morning, she performs a series of stretches to open out the body, improve circulation and energy flow and prevent muscular strains. This takes five minutes.
13:00pm – Three days each week, Breda uses half her one-hour lunch break to take a walk in a park close to her workplace. Recently, she has started jogging the route on one of these days.
Weeknights – Breda and her husband take turns in prepping dinner each night. She now uses this time to carry out a home workout routine prescribed by a local trainer. The routine takes 20 minutes, including a warm-up, main session and post-stretch.
Weekends – Breda’s is back in the pool. The family swim every Saturday or Sunday morning and she is up to about 30 lengths.
This solution does not require that Breda makes major changes to the structure of her day. A simple time inventory of how you spend your time can yield a new perspective and help you to realise where change is possible. Small, incremental steps taken daily are the secret to developing a habit of physical activity that will positively affect your physical and mental health. Time is running out, it’s true … for excuses!
Paul O’Brien is a personal trainer and life coach based in Westport.
