When you’ve had time out from exercise life usually takes over. You get busy, and seems like there’s no way back. But there is a way!

If you’re keen to fit exercise into a busy lifestyle check out the 4 recommended steps below;

1. Adjust your expectations

Maybe you’ve been in decent shape in the past. And it makes sense to think that you’ll be able to get right back to that.

But the reality is that your life’s different than it was 10+ years ago. You probably had fewer responsibilities and less family commitments. You could put more time and effort into exercise.

But that’s not the case anymore. In fact, one off the most common things we see in our personal training gym in Rodley is people trying to jump right back in at the level of fitness they left off, sometimes years ago.

This often leads to burnout and/or injury putting a stop to training.

So what to do instead? Be patient. Start from the beginning, build a solid foundation through core strengthening exercises and flexibility drills. Get your body moving better first, then develop strength and fitness on top of that.

2. Block time in your diary

Here’s the trap I’ve seen so many fall into; having no planned workouts booked in the diary and seeing where they can squeeze it in.

Unfortunately it never happens. Because something always comes up. Work meeting, sick kids, old friends getting in touch.

If you’re serious about getting your health and fitness back on track I can’t recommend this highly enough. Pull out your diary and book appointments for your workouts.

3. Start small

Beauty of getting into fitness is you only need to do a little more than you’re doing now to see results. So, if you’re doing nothing start with 10 minutes. When that’s easy, add another 5 minutes and so on.

Most people make the mistake of joining a gym, and diving right back in at the deep end hour long workouts. It’s just not necessary. And what’s more when you’ve got to psyche yourself up for an hour it takes a load more motivation

4. Get accountable

Something funny about us human beings; even though we want to get fit, need to get fit, even know what we need to do to get fit… sometimes we still don’t do it.

One of the mysteries of the human condition. Don’t worry about trying to reason with this age old – often frustrating – condition. Here’s how to work with it;

Commit to working with a training buddy, or a personal trainer

It’s all very well booking time out in the diary. But it’s too easy to scratch that appointment if you just don’t feel like it on the day.

But when you’re committed to meeting someone you’ll make it happen. We’re less likely to bail on an appointment with someone else. But for some reason if it’s only ourselves we’re letting down we have no problem skipping a session (or two!).

Need help getting started?

If you’ve tried getting in shape on your own and found it a struggle, request more info and we’ll be in touch for a chat to see how one of our personal training programs can help you.