are there days where you only train certain parts of your body / only do certain exercises because you simply don’t have the time for a full workout?
my ideal workout means stair climbing, running-walking and stretching. It can well last 2 hours.
Some days I don’t have enough time to do all that. Would it be better to do less of each kind of exercising or just to fixate on one kind?
Any exercise is better than none :-)
We all have varied, busy lives that never fit the neat structured exercise plans we read about, or make for ourselves. Sometimes we only find 15 minutes free in a day for some quick exercise. And if that’s the only time we have available that day, then that’s enough.
Ideally you’ll find time for more structured exercise at least once a week, but don’t beat yourself up if you struggle with your schedule, you’re only human, just do what you can, that already puts you ahead of most people <3
Who downvoted you? We can’t all escape our responsibilities for 3 hours, or enough to work everything at a strict schedule.
Yeah, this is bad advice for a comp level, or optimal progress, but for 99% of people the habit of going and doing something is orders of magnitude better than finding every excuse not to go that day.
I do 20-30 minutes every second day.
One day - Body weight exercises at home, variations of pushups and tabata.
Two days later - Exercise bike, burning 300 calories in 30 mins.
Nothing special but keeps my heart, arms and legs pretty strong without a huge time investment.
It all depends on your goal. Wanna look ripped, you need hours in the gym. Want to just have a body that doesn’t hurt and feels good, then its enough with moderate exercise.
Can you walk to a place instead of drive daily?
I replaced a 10 minute commute with a 45 minute walk. Got me walking nearly 8 hours a week. ~20 miles.
I think building it into your routine rather than making it an event is key.
I think building it into your routine rather than making it an event is key.
Yup, and I’d also recommend planning your exercise around the time your energy peaks during the day. I’m a morning person, so I work out in the morning.
Yup, second on this one. Exact same change made, and the gf and I love it. We even walk when it’s minus 20 (though after that we’ll drive). Many days afterwards we’re both too beat for much more of a hard workout, so I’ll hammer out some pushups to failure or smtg
Two ways:
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prioritize your time. If something is important to you then you adjust other things to make time. Such as spending less time on social media aka lemmy.
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shorter duration, higher intensity.
For you if you’re short on time id focus on running- walking, pushing yourself to run more frequently than if you had the full 2 hours. The idea is to get your heart rate up higher than normal
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You’re aware of low-volume HIIT? Max 15 minutes per day, evidence-based for cardiovascular health same as “normal” exercise. Not for building muscle afaik, and finding your own among the many more-or-less tested ones can be a chore. The popular “Scientific 7-minute workout” and it new versions would probably be a good place to start, and are targeted more for building strength afaik.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37939367/ https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout/
Edit: Oh, and to answer your question, I don’t. I do move about by bike and play BeatSaber because it’s fun, otherwise decomposing.
My workouts are organized such that on any day, the order of the exercises is also their importance. So if there’s ever a need to cut things short, I still do the same workout but I’ll cut it short somewhere in the middle.
If I know what I’m losing a whole workout somewhere, then there’s one of two things I can do. If my body is well recovered, then on the last workout before the break, I’ll bring the intensity way up with lots of myo-reps and drop sets and increase the number of sets. If I’m in need of recovery, then I don’t do anything special and just treat those days as a deload.
The question you should be asking is what you’re trying to achieve with each element of your workout and how important it is for you. For example, what do you get out of stair climbing that you don’t from running-walking or stretching? If there isn’t anything specific, it may well be that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something. Consider also what your body might need recovery from. For example, does running hurt your joints? If so, then maybe use that opportunity to take a break from it.
You do what you can, when you can.
Like, I’m disabled now, so the days of three hour long dedicated workout sessions are long gone. I can barely manage anything that takes longer than cooking a decent meal, and the more impact there is, the shorter the time gets. So, you know, serious cardio is out.
However, you can exercise anywhere, any time, assuming the situation makes it feasible at all (might have issues at work, etc).
So, you cram things in. Sitting at a desk for fifteen? Keep your legs moving. Reading files, you can do so while finding some kind of activity that fits how you’re reading. Laptop on your knees, maybe you do some curls. Have a tablet you can use, or paper files, do some pushups while you read.
If you’re going to have only one single session, make it cardio. Nothing else gives the same time/benefit ratio, and you can do different cardio depending on where you are. So, you might only have an hour, use it running since you don’t need a specific gym or piece of gear.
Gotta work with what you’ve got
I can barely manage anything that takes longer than cooking a decent meal.
Yeah, 3 hours.
There’s a reason I need the gym
I mean, there’s plenty of good meals that only take a half hour to an hour. I’d go as far as to say that if you include stuff where a pot is just simmering and you’re waiting, there’s a ton of options.
Depends on how fast prep is, I guess. I’m used to just zipping through prep since it’s something I’ve done since I was a kid.
Take something like beef stew. That’s twenty minutes of actual cooking, ten of prep, and a bunch of patience.
There’s complicated dishes that take more attention as it cooks, along with a lot of fiddly prep, like beef wellington, where you’re right on top of it the entire time.
I guess it also depends in what the standard of “decent” is lol. Spaghetti can take fifteen minutes start to finish, or it can take a couple of hours including simmer time for the sauce.
Sounds like your regular workout is mostly cardio and legs. So maybe the days you don’t have time would be good for some upper body and core strength building.
Treadmill under my desk, so I can walk and work at the same time. And 10 min of Pilates before bed.
This is a shorter answer than I typically would write, but any sort of exercise program should be atuned to your specific circumstances, since if it’s not practical to execute upon it, then it’s not going to sustainably achieve its objectives.
As for me personally, I wrote my program based on a friend’s five-day-per-week program, which splits the days into: arm day, back/shoulders day, chest day, leg day, and core day. I specifically do not want to be overworking certain muscle groups without adequate rest. Each day takes no more than 60-70 minutes, including warm ups.
Might I suggest posing in c/gym or c/homegym for advice on how to tune your current program; there shouldn’t be a need for a full rip-and-replace.
I typically go for a run. The good thing is that you can control the intensity by increasing/decreasing your speed.
Only have 15 minutes? Run relativity quick and you more than likely be in heart rate zone 4.
Try having several options for workouts you enjoy. Sometimes I do a single set past failure of bodyweight exercises for a great and efficient workout under 10 minutes. For quick cardio I do sets of sprints to failure in under 20 minutes.
Try to follow at least the WHO recommendation of 30 min of moderate exercise per day on average. Maybe you can consider this budget and balance it over your week depending on how busy you are.
Ummmmmmm…I work like 20 hours a day, 6 days a week. 90% of the time I don’t even know what day it is. How would I EVER have time to lift heavy things???
