So You Say You Don’t Have Time to Workout
Do you have the time to work out? I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ll receive absolutely no sympathy from me if you continue to insist that you just don’t have time to workout.Within a very short radius from your humble abode sit several health clubs, including that one to which you are probably still paying a monthly membership fee. Then, there are those of you who have a nice fitness center located in the very building which you reside. Many of you have spent good money on new or slightly used pieces of exercise equipment for your own home. While others are blessed to have a beautiful park system nearby. So, what is the real problem? The last time I checked there are still twenty-four hours in a day. Your body’s alarm clock has gone off repeatedly. You cannot continue to press the snooze button forever. Everyone, including you, can make some precious time available to take care of his or her body. Ask anyone, including me, for short and long term yields, it is one of the best investments you can possibly make. You don’t have to ramble on about how much you adamantly dislike it. That’s pretty much been well established. The time has come to move beyond that negative mindset and face the inevitable. You can choose to watch the sands of time slip away or you can go and do something today!
You seem to be able to find the time to run home and tune into ESPN for the nine hundred and ninety-ninth game of the week , or swim through the endless channels to locate the premiere of some lame reality show. You squeeze, drop, kick, and misplace your cell phone. After frantically stretching your mind and squatting your body only to discover it was in your pocket, you proceed to hop, skip, and jump from Facebook to Twitter to Pinterest to Instagram and still other social networking sites. You lift your laptop and flex your fingers as they speed walk you to every known internet news outlet so you can cycle through all the top stories from the past week. But, of course, these activities don’t qualify as exercise. Yet, they seem to be a weighty priority. As you are pushed and pulled in many directions during the course of your day, I ask you to consider if these and other things are really such pressing matters.
Even the obvious statement that something is better than nothing may not be sufficiently motivating to you. So, this is your mission call. You are required to find thirty, twenty, or even just fifteen minutes today, and you will begin the first of many awesome workouts. I am going to offer one workout concept for you which is ideal for your current lifestyle. It is fast-paced and extremely time efficient. You’ll even be able to fit in a warm-up and some stretching because it’s so simple. You are going to focus specifically on multi-tasking exercise movements. You will be using an approach to lifting weights that is sometimes referred to as break-down training. Instead of choosing the usual suspects, which isolate one particular muscle, you will be picking a couple exercises which give you more bang for your buck. A few examples of such moves are a wonderful row exercise, the always challenging lat-pulldown, an upright row, the fan-favorite chess press, the unpopular overhead press, and the familiar leg press. Yes, these engage multiple muscles in one simple movement. The training protocol asks you to begin your strength work with the heaviest weight which you can handle safely. First, perform a reasonable number of repetitions to fatigue. Then, lower the weight, or “break it down”, and continue the lifting and lowering motion through a full range to complete exhaustion, once more. Finally, try another effort at decreasing the resistance, and once again without any rest period whatsoever, work to absolute muscle fatigue. You have essentially packed three sets into one! Am I endorsing this as the only method that you should use for the rest of your life? No, I am not suggesting that you never again change the training protocol. But, is this method fast-paced? Absolutely, it is! Does this fit your criteria of being time efficient? Yes, that’s a no brainer! Will you discover that it is intense? Well, yea! That’s the idea. Could this provide the wake up call your body needs? I think it just might do the trick for you. So, experiment with this approach. It believe that you’ll be more inclined to make the time for a workout if you understand that you can feel great about a quick visit to the gym.
If you need a quick refresher course regarding options, don’t hesitate to ask. It is just amazing what a little bit of knowledge and a healthy dose of encouragement can do for you. If I teach you seven or eight different ways to perform the same basic exercise movement, then you’ll never hit a “dead end” in your lightening fast routine. Unfortunately, some of you may have limited yourselves by never venturing out of your comfort zone. There may have even been an occasion or two in the past when you abandoned your workout because someone was using your machine or monopolizing your favorite area of the gym. This is a non-issue when you broaden your horizon by learning to use resistance bands, dumbbell exercises, a cable cross-over apparatus, a smith machine, to name a few, along with your standardized strength training machines. With a fuller repertoire at your disposal, no longer can you use the excuse that the gym is too busy. You will have multiple back-up plans. I want you to have complete faith in your ability to be totally competent at the gym. Regardless of the size and experience of the crowd, you will stand out. You exude confidence!
Before you rush to the gym to get this party started, let me make one more suggestion. Don’t be afraid to mix it up with the exercise ball. You can multi-task until your heart’s content with those stability balls sitting in the corner of the room. How about performing various upper body exercises at the same time you are engaged in a series of wall squats with the ball! Chances are that your arms or shoulders may fatigue before your legs, but that just signals for you to begin a different upper body movement. Throw in an abdominal and lower back exercise on the ball while you are having fun, and lo and behold, you are done. Once again, you can be through a fifteen to thirty minute routine without having to concern yourself with the clock. The hourglass indicates that you are right on schedule. Best of all, you came, you saw, and you kicked its behind!