Fitness Hacks for the Busy Bee: How to Keep Up With Your Goals

Looking to get serious about your workout routine?

Let's talk about nailing those fitness goals, like hitting strength exercises twice a week and clocking in 150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity.

But here's the kicker: how do you make this stick when you're always running low on time?

🧹Check out your home routine. Think about the household chores that get you sweating and breathing harder, and how often you do them?

For instance, if you're mopping the floor or vacuuming every week (sorry, robot vacuums don’t count 😅), playing actively with your kids or dog, you can count that as part of your aerobic exercise.

🚶‍♂️Walking fast is a great activity that you can sneak into your day with tiny tweaks. How can you adjust your usual routes to add more walking?

Maybe park your car a bit further from your house, get off the bus one stop earlier, take a longer route to the store, or go for a walk during your lunch break. This way, you can rack up 10-15 minutes of exercise a day.

❤️Find something you enjoy. What have you always wanted to try or used to love doing? Often, people only think of hitting the gym to get fit, but there are loads of alternatives: yoga, dancing, rock climbing, cycling classes, soccer, etc. Many can even be started at home with online workouts.

🫂Get your loved ones involved. Can you pick some active things to do with your family or friends on the weekends? Go for walks or hiking, try table tennis with your spouse, or go fishing with your parents.

Incorporating strength training into your routine is trickier since there aren’t really household chores that can replace it (unless you’re into gardening and clearing snow off paths).

However, some types of yoga or dance include strength elements, which means they count as multi-component physical activity.

The good news is that even individual routines targeting major muscle groups can take around 30-60 minutes per week.

So, they shouldn’t be too hard to fit into your schedule. Just 15-30 minutes per session, with 8-12 reps of an exercise (though you can increase the sets as you get stronger and your muscles get firmer).

If you're looking for a standard set of strength exercises, patient websites (or a search for “muscle strength exercises”) have some options: