There are always times in the year where we just don’t have time to properly exercise, which can leave you feeling guilty. Whilst a diet is the most important aspect of working out, a bad diet is easily fixed whereas it is a lot harder to find that motivation to go to the gym after time off.
In this blog post, we’re going to be outlining our top tips to keep active when you’re otherwise occupied.
Plan, Plan, Plan
You could be visiting family, but unfortunately sometimes family don’t live near. Planning where you’re going to go and what you’re going to do can be the difference of you getting even 30 minutes you need, or being immobile for a few days.
If your family have the delight of visiting family near walking, running or park trials, great! That means that your cardiovascular fitness will be topped up whilst being able to spend time with the family.
If you haven’t got much room, plan simple workouts that do not require equipment and make use of what space you’ve got. You could even ask if they have a kettlebell or medicine ball, but that doesn’t matter too much. If you are working with nothing, using bodyweight exercises such as squats, press-ups, burpees, lunges etc are still going to be getting that heart beating and the blood flowing.
If you’ve gone away to see the family, ask them if they have an exercise room or an in-house gym – that will keep you active! If not, then have a look at Hustle, downloading the app unlocks thousands of gyms at your fingertips. It uses your location to find you gyms nearby and then enables you to buy day-passes to the said gym, to ensure that you are keeping active. You can download their app by clicking here.
Jenny McCoy from self.com notes that it is a lot easier to stick to exercising if you’ve mentally planned and prepared yourself for it – especially if it is not in your usual routine. If it’s been pre-planned, you’ll mentally know when it’s time to do it and it will be easier to squeeze into your busy routine.
How Do I Do Home Workouts Away From Home?
Whilst planning is quintessential, sometimes you may have had too much to drink or coming down with a fever. Sometimes there just is no way that you are physically able to get yourself out and exercising in an efficient manner. No worries, even the slightest bit of exercise is better than no exercise, so let’s get creative and figure out what you can do now.
Walking is the best form of cardiovascular exercise. Walking as much as you can throughout the busy period keeps the blood flowing and heart beating. Even if it is just walking to the shop rather than driving, it’s a start.
If you’re shopping, try and look for the slightly longer route to the next shop, don’t worry it’s going to be there still but it might just take you a little bit longer. Also, I’d personally count carrying a lot of heavy bags around a shopping centre all day is definitely a weight exercise – so that’s ticked off.
Using the stairs is also a big one if you’re going up to floor 17 or something then I’d recommend taking the lift as you don’t want to get tired out. But, if you’re only going up to floor 4, take the stairs instead.
Ice Skating is a festive favourite, it’s fun for all the family and it’s a high-intensity exercise. In fact, you can burn up to 670 calories depending on your weight for 30 minutes of ice-skating. Now, that sounds efficient.
Seize The Moment
We know that a lot of the time you spend in the living room with your family and sometimes you don’t get the time to exercise, so this segment is how you can utilise your spare 15-30 minutes efficiently.
When you plan your workout, make a contingency plan for quick, little home workout routines you can do in little space. We recommend following runnersworld.com’s guide for bodyweight exercises that are fast and effective.
If you have fitness equipment handy, move them into your room for some more home-workouts, it will save you the anxiety of working out in front of your family. Check out our article on home-workouts here.
Keeping your running shoes handy is massively beneficial. You might find that there are a couple of times where you get a window big enough to take a light jog, a run on a morning will get your appetite going.
