6 ways to squeeze fitness into your day

It turns out one of the most common reasons people struggle to start or keep exercising is not having enough time.

And we get it. Life can be busy when you’re working, raising a family, studying or any combination of these and other commitments. It can be hard to find time for anything outside of your regular ‘life’ tasks.

Luckily we’ve got a few tips to help you fit in your exercise – yes, even the busiest of you.

1. Make time

You’re never going to ‘find’ time in a busy day, so let’s see if we can ‘make’ time instead. Take a look at your day and see if there are activities that can be replaced with a quick workout.

For example, do you sit down while dinner is cooking and mindlessly scroll through social media? Do you wake up two or three hours before you leave the house for work, watch TV before breakfast and slowly get ready for the day? Do you sit and watch Netflix for a few hours before bed?

Any of these times could be spent exercising!

2. Merge activities

If you’ve looked at your day and can’t see any obvious time slots you could clear for exercise, try merging it into something you already do.

If you take the dog for a walk morning and night, merge your exercise into the same time – you can complete a HIIT session at the park while throwing a ball for your dog. Or you could get through a workout in your living room with Netflix on in the background. You could even incorporate a quick training session into your ‘me time’ in the mornings by meditating and doing some yoga or Pilates before breakfast.

3. Take the kids with you

Have you ever noticed that kids LOVE to move? They have endless energy – which can work in your favor when it comes to exercise. If you’re juggling kids and finding time to work out, do both. Head outside into your garden or to a park with a ball for them to kick around while you train. Or let them exercise with you – take turns doing squats, see who can run the fastest to the tree and back and hold a plank together.

4. Make it a priority

If something is important to you, it will get done. Think of the different things that make up your day: they’re all priorities and so you make time for them, yes?

Think about why exercise is important to you. Is it going to improve your health, increase your energy levels, help you lose weight or tone up, give you a little more confidence in yourself, help with stress levels? YES! All of those reasons sound pretty important to us, so give it the same weight you give other priorities in your life.

5. Don’t over-commit

We love that you’ve made time to exercise next week, but promising yourself six training sessions in a week when last week you had no time for any movement doesn’t sound very realistic.

If you can make time for one, two or even three workouts next week, that’s a big improvement from no workouts, so start there. Once you find you can fit it in, keep going and make more time when you can. A regular exercise routine needs to be realistic and achievable to make it work – and honestly, you don't need a full-on cardio blast workout seven days a week to see results.

6. Keep it simple, keep it quick, take the thinking out of it

One of the main reasons we think we have no time for exercise is that we expect it to take 60 minutes or more. But nope, it doesn’t have to!

Centr workouts are generally less than 40 minutes long, some are only 20 minutes and will have you pumped for the rest of the day.

And even better, we have all the sessions lined up for you already, so you don’t need to find time to plan what you’re going to do. With Centr you can just log on and hit play on a workout customized for your goal – any time of the day you like.