Here’s why it’s only a myth that people, even “today,” are nowhere near too busy to exercise.
It’s one thing when an individual says she doesn’t have time to exercise.
It’s a whole new animal when a writer generalizes this idea by stating something like, “Today, people are busier than ever and may not have time to exercise.”
And therein lies the problem, because it’s a generalized assumption — and it has zero basis.
How is it that today (minus any business shutdowns due to a virus) people are “busier than ever”?
If people today are “time-starved,” then what were they before the invention of today’s time-saving electronic and “smart” devices?
People today are no more time-starved for exercise than they were decades ago.
With just about everything being done with the push of a button, people have more time than ever, not less!
This means more time than ever to devote 45 minutes a day to exercise, or 90 minutes three days a week, or some other similar permutation.
Shutterstock/Dusan Petkovic
What about people who truly are up to their neck in busyness?
Even the very busy people out there can find time to stick to exercise by incorporating a fabulous technique called high intensity interval training (HIIT).
A 20-minute HIIT session will whip your butt. Twenty minutes. Everyone has 20 minutes.
How to Prove You Have 20 Minutes if You Think You’re Too Busy
If you don’t think you can spare 20 minutes twice a week for HIIT or an intense round of strength training, ask yourself how easy it would be to find 20 minutes to count a stack of $50 bills — if you knew that if you correctly counted a four-foot-high stack every day, you’d get to keep the money.
Hmmm, you’d have absolutely no trouble finding a spare 20 minutes every day to carry out this task.
That’s because all that money is very important to you.
If you place a high premium on the health and fitness of your body, the time to do it will seep out of the woodwork.
Burst Training
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This consists of one-minute, high intensity bursts of cardio-based activity scattered throughout the day, six to eight times.
- Squat jumps
- Lunge jumps
- Jump rope
- Box jumps
- Burpees
- Stair dashing
- Mountain climbers
- Bodyweight squats
- Fast running (treadmill or your yard)
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Strength Training
Twenty minutes spent wisely training with weights will go a long way in terms of firing up one’s metabolism, increasing strength, improving fitness and improving one’s physical appearance.
Shutterstock/Jasminko Ibrakovic
If you’re truly, truly too busy to devote more than 20 minutes to strength training, then you should do exercises that yield the biggest bang for their buck:
- Deadlift
- Squat
- Chest press (barbell or dumbbells)
- Seated row or lat pull-down
- Leg press
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When exercise becomes important enough, even the busiest person will find time to do it.
Gee, with today’s smart technology, you can lock all the doors in your house and start your coffee machine while sitting in a chair. Nobody is truly too busy to exercise.
