Making enough time for fitness seems to be a pretty common roadblock amongst people.
In fact, I’d honestly say that more than 60% of the applications I get for coaching say something along the lines of “I just don’t have the time” as a reason for them not reaching their goals.
I’d have you consider that it has nothing to do with how much time is in the day, but more about how willing you are to sacrifice some time for fitness and your health.
Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example because he’s debatably the busiest man alive, or at least the busiest man displaying it via social media for all of us to witness (Don’t know him? Look him up, watch his YouTube videos, and see how fired up you get).
My point is simple; we all have time.
I’ve worked with entrepreneurs, traveling businessmen, nurses and surgeons, college students working part-time jobs, parent’s with more than a couple kids, parents with kids and full-time jobs, and everything in between or combined… They all started with just making the time.
Now I wasn’t planning on making this the “Step-by-Step Guide For Busy Mo-Fo’s Trying To Get Fit”, but shit… I love steps and so do you, makes it easy and teaches you exactly where to start.
So I’m going to roll with the punches and give you step numero uno.
MAKE THE DAMN TIME!
Yeah, I got a little hype there because it’s that simple. Yeah I know… “You actually really don’t have the time.” But nobody has anything until we make it or take it.
Wake up earlier.
Stop at the gym after work.
Take a 15-minute walk at lunch every day (it adds up).
Start your morning with a 5-minute mobility flow and 50-100 burpees or jump squats in your living room.
Stop watching Walking Dead every single night (try watching it every other night).
Train Saturday and Sunday because you don’t work.
Use the hotel gym.
Go on a hike.
I could literally keep going and going with this list. It has nothing to do with having the options or time, it literally comes down to wanting it or not.
And trust me guys, I’m not the “Get some brother! Go hard or go home!” type of dude at all. So this isn’t me being hardcore about it, it’s just me being real and being raw about the truth of why many people don’t succeed.
So many people believe they need to alter their lives and schedule to make fitness work for them, but the reality is the polar opposite.
The goal is to alter and adjust the fitness, to make it fit within your life and schedule.
In fact, that’s step #2.
ADJUST FITNESS TO YOU, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND.
This just means that we shouldn’t adjust our schedules too much for training or nutrition, but rather we should adjust training and nutrition to fit our schedule better.
Work til 5 and the wife wants you home after work to help with the kids? Cool, do a 25-minute workout at lunch break and spend the extra 35 minutes changing and eating a quick lunch or shake.
Traveling constantly for work? No worries, hit the hotel gym first thing in the AM or before bed. Almost all hotels have gyms, and the few that don’t have one near by, or you can just hit a 10-20 minute bodyweight circuit in the room.
Ok, but that’s not you. Maybe you do have the time to get in the gym… But when you do, you don’t have the time or motive to figure out what the hell you should be doing when you finally get there.
Again, no worries. Guess what so many others and I do for a career?? Train people and make plans for loads of people, just like you! So reach out.
Whether it’s a Gold’s Gym, a Crossfit, something way better than anything else on the planet, like a Vigor Ground (yeah I said it), or maybe you can’t stick to one place or time – cool there is this thing called “The World Wide Web” and you can hire coaches online now.
But in all seriousness, it just takes reaching out. Most of us procrastinate on this aspect for way too long, I know I did.
Click Here if this speaks to you and you’d like real help – whether you’re in Seattle or not.
Once again, these are all ways and options to make sure you fit training into your lifestyle, not the other way around.
The point of getting fit is to better your life, not create a more hectic or unrealistic schedule and then never enjoy your new healthy and lean body.
Ok so now we know, it’s really up to you to take action and that you need to be more relaxed with it all by fitting it into your life and not the other way around… What else is there?
START WITH ONE THING
This is a HUGE one for anyone trying to achieve, well anything really. Habits take diligence and focus to make stick around, so adding one thing at a time can be the simple hack actually allowing that to happen.
Lets put it into perspective for this article.
You’re a busy workhorse, you have loads of stress already, you have a family to care for, and, of course, you still like to actually enjoy your free time (with walking dead and poker night… or something like that).
So maybe for the next 12-weeks you give yourself a challenge to implement 1 single habit each week. If you successfully get an 8/10 or more, on a scale of 1/10, with that habit, you add the next one.
Here are your habits:
Week 1 -> Drink 4 liters of water daily.
Week 2 -> Go on a 10-15 minute walk daily.
Week 3 -> Eat a protein based, healthy, breakfast.
Week 4 -> Have a handful of green veggies with dinner.
Week 5 -> Join a gym.
Week 6 -> Attend the gym 1-2x per week.
Week 7 -> Have a protein based, healthy, lunch.
Week 8 -> Cutting drinking alcohol back to 1-2 time a week.
Week 9 -> Add 5 minutes to your daily walk.
Week 10 -> Add 1-2 more days in that gym you joined.
Week 11 -> Add a fish oil and creatine supplement into your regime.
Week 12 -> Hire a professional to train you and/or write your programs to take things to the next level.
If you successfully did this, over the course of 3 months, you’d make a significant change in your body, strength, muscle, and overall well being. Not too mention your confidence, energy, and overall mood would improve a ton as well.
Sometimes, actually scratch that… majority of the time, we all rush to the result.
We assume more is better, we are confident we can crush 20 new things in our life at once, and we’re just focused on the end result, forgetting the entire process of getting there.
Embracing the process is huge. Not only will you appreciate the result 2x more when you get there, but it also provides sustainability down the road after you’ve already achieved the goal.
I’ve personally accomplished and met many individuals who have been able to accomplish 10 new habits the first week and keep it up for a solid 4-6 weeks. They get fantastic results, but 9 times out of 10 after those 6 weeks it all goes down hill.
We cannot manage all the habits anymore because we did not build them in one by one, like I described above.
So before looking at that list of habits, getting macho and telling yourself, “Phhh… Whatever bro, beast mode or go home! I’ll do it all in 4 weeks, watch.”
Just trust me this one time, I’ve been doing this for a while and I’ve worked with plenty of people who thought that too. Adding to that, I’ve thought that myself 1 too many times as well.
Next I’m going to give you a little bonus, just for reading this far along. Because I’m going to assume that if you are still reading this, then you are going to love what I’m going to give you…
A ‘FREE 25-Minute Training Program’, that can be done every single day.
The concept behind this is simple, it’s for extremely busy people who just do not have time to work out for a full hour every single day and instead of hitting the gym 3 days a week for 1+ hours at a time, you’ll workout 4-6 days per week for just 25 minutes each time.
4 of these days will be specific strength training days that can be done by literally anyone, the other 2 days are simply cardio to burn some extra calories and keep recovery optimized on your “in-between days”.
Because I’ve created a PDF template for you on this, with the sets, reps, RPE scale, specific coaching notes, and more – You’ll need to Click Here to receive it. It doesn’t format in this blog page, so I’ll email it to you within 5 minutes of you clicking.
If you have ANY questions about how to perform anything at all, just hit me with an email at [email protected]
One last thing to add in, is that you should probably warm up first… Meaning this will probably be more like 30-35 minutes total (including all the breaks in the training). I’d suggest a basic warm up like the one I detail out in my Video Here or even hitting the stationary bike for 5 minutes before lifting.
My next recommendation is simple, if you feel like you need some extra help on the nutrition front as well – check out my Free eBook “The Handful Diet” which has helped more than 100’s of people shed fat, build muscle and finally find control over their diet (not too mention, it’s been featured on BodyBuilding.com and VigorGroundFitness.com).
You can receive your Free Copy of The Handful Diet -> Right Here.
