For busy professionals, it’s quite challenging to manage time to complete three-four workout sessions in a week from their already busy schedule.
A busy person could struggle from time to time to find time to work out in his/her busy life.
It’s difficult… but doable.
In this post, we will share a 3-4 day workout routine especially tailored to fit into your busy life, how a busy person can workout more efficiently, how to exercise more frequently and some other exercise tips for busy people.
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12 Best Exercise & Fitness Tips For A Busy Person
1. Complete your workout in the morning
If you struggle to maintain consistency, then you need to start exercising in the morning.
For busy professionals, the morning is the best time to workout, unless you have to go to work early in the morning.
Because when you don’t exercise in the morning and think you will do it later in the day, there remains a high chance that – on most of the days, you will skip it.
Due to the type of tasks a busy person does, during the day there remain several chances that they might get busy with a new task or come back home – totally exhausted and just want to relax.
If you want to build exercising as a habit then you need to try exercising in the morning.
It’s sustainable. And there are some advantages to it.
Some good reasons to exercise in the morning:
- It gives you a sense of accomplishment and you feel relief, knowing that you can relax after coming back from work.
- Morning exercise boosts your metabolism.
- You will be much more active and productive during the day.
- Helps you to become more consistent with your workout.
- Read – The health benefits of working out in the morning to know about all the benefits.
Recommended reading: How to find time to workout with a busy schedule
2. How to cut down workout time and exercise more
Long workout sessions can be a big turn offs for a busy person.
Even if they workout for 30 minutes at the gym, the preparation & commute time can increase the overall time to finish the workout session.
Those days are fine when you feel motivated to workout and have some free time.
But on busy days you might think to skip exercising…
If you go to a gym then the best solution is to find a gym close to your residence or workout from home. The advantage of exercising from home is – you don’t have to commute. So, it can save you a lot of time. And you can exercise more than earlier in less time.
3. Find a workout that fits into your busy schedule
Following a workout routine that is made for all might not be equally effective for a busy professional.
You need to create your own workout routine. Below we have a sample workout routine for busy professionals.
For a busy person, the perfect workout session time is 35 minutes. Or it can vary between 12-40 minutes depending on your workout goals. You can choose to workout only 15 minutes on a busy day. Then workout for 25-40 minutes on other days, when you are not that busy.
To have a fit, active, and toned body; you have to workout three times a week, minimum.
Ideally, it’s good to workout four times a week. So that – depending on the day, you can choose between a short or medium-length workout session.
Also read: Best home workout tips and secrets.
Simple Workout Routine for Busy People
Day 1: Probably it will be Monday or Tuesday.
15 minutes of home workout.
What you can do – Stretching 6 minutes, especially focus on the neck, shoulder and hip.
It will help you survive through the workload of the week ahead.
For strength building… 20-30 pushups, if you can’t do it in one go, do it over 2-3 sets. 25 -30 Bodyweight squats or you can also use two dumbbells.
Day 2: A typical busy day.
10-15 minutes workout session (can be skipped if you want to exercise only 3 times a week).
What you can do – 2-3 minutes of stretching, plank for 20-30 seconds (two times), 10-15 lunges, 15-20 body-weight jump squats and 10 burpees.
Day 3: You have some time and waiting for the weekends to come.
25-30 minutes of home workout/ outdoor/ nearby gym.
TIP: In this workout session, you can choose many exercises according to your mood and how much you want to sweat…
What you can do – If you are exercising outdoors/ nearby gym, run for 10-15 minutes or if you are exercising indoors do cardio and stretching for 10-15 minutes.
When you are done take 1-minute rest, then 6-10 minutes of stretching and leg workouts. Now do some standing hamstring stretch, lunges and side lunges, box jump, squats with/without weight and jumping jacks.
Day 4: As a busy professional and fitness lover, you have a Sunday workout session ( in all seriousness if you have made a plan or in case of urgency -exercise on Saturday…but never miss this workout session).
Workout session 35-40 minutes. Hell yeah…get those muscles pumped.
Exercises you want to do: Today you have a full workout session. So you better use this time for good. Let’s go for a full-body workout.
* Do 60 squats over 2-3 sets
* 25 -40 pushups over 1-2 set
* 20-25 burpees
* Running (optional) – 4 minutes jogging, 2 minutes sprint,2 minutes slow jogging, 1-2 minutes sprinting and then walk for 2-3 minutes.
If you are in the gym or have dumbbells/barbells at home:
Do 3-4 of these exercises for 2-3 sets (8-14 reps).
* Shoulder press
* Bicep curls
* Weighted lunges… preferably with dumbbells
* Weighted squats
* Deadlift.
Resource: 20 minutes full body home workout, you can also pick those exercises and make your own custom workout routine out of it.
4. Focus on exercises that engage your full body
Pushups are great for someone…who works 4-6 hours from a desk on average. Especially, PUSHUPS can help you improve your body posture, shoulder, wrist and hand muscles.
To build your strength and burn more calories in less time you need to focus on exercises that engage your full body or multiple body parts.
Most of these full-body workouts can be performed by using your body weight. So, you can definitely try these in your home.
Do these exercises to build stamina and burn your unused calories:
- Burpees (Burpee tutorial video – YouTube)
- Squats, jump squats (Jump squats tutorial – YouTube)
- Lunges ( How to do a lunge – YouTube)
- Pushups, knee pushups ( Exercise video pushups and knee pushups – YouTube)
- Plank (Plank tutorial – YouTube)
- Frog jump ( How to do frog jump exercise – YouTube)
Related article: Benefits of pushups
5. Make a fitness buddy
If you skip your workouts then you might consider making a fitness buddy.
Staying in touch with someone who also has a fitness goal as you can motivate yourself. Also, it makes you accountable.
6. Quick exercises in your workplace
Doing 3-4 minutes of quick exercise in your workplace can refresh your mood and relax your body.
Here’s a YouTube video tutorial on desk exercises (3 minutes)
You may have heard about this tip – use the stairs instead of the elevator.
If it’s working for you then great.
Or you can consider this: During lunch breaks or when you are moving from one floor to another… take the elevator and come out from the elevator 2 floors earlier. Doing this 2-3 times per day can help you do some leg workouts. Also, it won’t make you feel like climbing a lot of stairs at once (it’s much more practical and easy… after you do it for 3-5 days.)
7. Have a clear fitness goal and keep patience
It’s important to have a clear fitness goal. It simplifies the process.
Mixing your fitness goals or trying to complete multiple goals can mix the whole thing. And you won’t get your desired results. It can demotivate you.
That’s why you need to focus on one thing at a time.
First decide whether you want to build your strength, lose weight or want to build some lean muscles.
Tackle each of those within 45 days time period. It will become much easier.
8. Exercise tips to get a toned body
Who would not like to have an amazing toned body? Here are some quick tips on how to get a toned body.
- After you build your body strength through bodyweight exercises you need to increase your workout intensity and include some advanced movements into your workout routine.
- Simple squats can be transformed into a jump squat. It will give your leg a nice shape. Especially your calves and lower thighs.
- For a flat stomach and strong core combine pushups with burpees.
- To tone, your hand muscles do 3-4 sets of dumbbell curls and hammer curls. In each set try to do 9-12 reps.
9. Run more often
Running is one of the easiest ways to get started in fitness. It’s very flexible, you can always adjust how long you want to run and how fast?
There are many health benefits of running. Running is a great way to build your stamina and burn calories. Running regularly can help you increase your lung capacity, build your leg and thigh muscle, strengthen your joints, increase bone density, relieve stress and many more.
Running 2-3 times a week is a great way to live a healthy active lifestyle.
Related: 10 Daily exercises you should do to stay fit.
10. Working out from home can give great results
As we mentioned earlier, running can help you a lot to be more fit. But for some busy people it might be not practical because of the two reasons:
- To access a field to run you have to commute
- Your gym is far away, from where you live. (If that’s the case you can look for treadmills or indoor cycling bikes.)
It becomes easy to exercise from home if you have some free space. Although to do some basic to semi-advanced home workouts you only need a place where you can fit 2-3 stationary and some light fitness equipment.
What to do if you don’t have a space for a home gym?
For regular exercise, you can use your lawn or balcony. And you can have some exercise equipment that can be stored easily and only take those out when you want to workout.
Recommended fitness equipment for home: 2 Sets of dumbbells ( 1 lightweight + one medium weight), one kettlebell, one or two resistance bands… that’s all.
With these, you can do most of the workouts you do at the gym.
We will cover more about home workouts in the next posts. So, if you want to get notified, subscribe to our mailing list.
11. Double your exercise results by eating the right food
It’s said that you exercise to sculpt your body and your food forms the body. And it’s absolutely true.
Only exercising isn’t that effective if you don’t look after what you eat. And when you have limited time to exercise and want to have a toned body then you need to make good food choices.
If you love eating tasty food and want to be fit; it’s best to find a balance between nutritious and tasty food.
Also, your eating habits and food choices determine how many calories you are consuming.
For a busy person who doesn’t do much physical work, it’s good to sit once in a while and calculate your average daily calorie intake. Following some eating patterns like intermittent fasting can help you to keep your calories in check.
Related: 10 Healthy food and drinks that actually taste good.
12. Exercising through outdoor activities you love
Outdoor activities are great to be more active and it’s fun too.
It’s hard to be more physically active when you work from a desk. Outdoor activities like gardening, hiking and cycling… allow you to live an active lifestyle. It’s refreshing. Also, there are some health benefits of spending time in nature.
The best part about, outdoor activities – there are so many options. It means you can always find something new and exciting to do and never get bored.
Also, making some fitness goals can help you to improve your fitness game.
Read next: 12 Daily healthy habits you should adopt to live a healthy lifestyle.
Completely agree with you on at home workouts. When you have to work 8+ hours daily, managing time gets really difficult. And we all got other priorities in life. So, it’s better to go for a home workout when you have an office job.