Consistency is key if you want to see results on your fitness journey, but sticking to a workout routine can be difficult when life gets busy. You may manage to squeeze in a workout on a relatively light day, only to find yourself going five days without exercising when work, family and other responsibilities take over. But your body needs consistency to build sustainable habits and see progress, so how do you make time for exercise and keep showing up, even when your schedule is packed?
Chennai-based fitness coach Raj Ganpath, who has more than 18 years of experience and is the founder of the Slow Burn Method, co-founder and head coach at Quad Fitness, and author of Simple, Not Easy, has shared a mindset shift that could help you stay consistent with exercise, especially if you struggle to fit it into an already busy schedule.
In an Instagram video shared on August 12, the fitness coach highlights, “Let’s be honest and practical for a second. For the common person, how do you find time to exercise? You have coaches like me saying, ‘It’s just three to four hours a week. Somehow make it happen. Find the time.’ But where do you find the time from? You’re probably already busy.”
When life gets in the way
Raj outlines the practicalities of everyday life: from the moment you wake up, there is always something demanding your time. Household responsibilities, taking care of the kids, social engagements, spending time with loved ones, doomscrolling (because, who are we kidding?) – and then there is work, along with the daily commute.
By the time you have made it through all of that, you are likely already exhausted and more than ready to call it a day. The fitness coach continues, “Then there’s the time when you’re exhausted and you don’t want to do anything else. It’s just loaded. So, I completely understand if you just don’t have the time to exercise. By the time you’re done with everything that you have to do, you’re left with literally no time to exercise and you’re not able to do this consistently.”
How do you make time for working out?
Raj suggests changing your mindset towards exercise if you are serious about making time for it. Rather than treating it as something you will do if you have time, he recommends making exercise a daily priority and scheduling it accordingly.
He explains, “In my opinion, you can fix this by making one mindset change. It is about prioritisation. You need to stop looking at exercise as something that you will do after doing everything that you need to do. You have to start looking at exercise as something that you need to do, that you have to do. You have to move it into this list. You have to put it into this bucket.”
How to effectively achieve prioritisation?
Raj suggests two ways to make exercise a genuine priority. The first is to simply carve out time for it while keeping everything else in your schedule intact. The second, and perhaps more practical approach, is to reassess your priorities, drop a less important activity and make room for exercise instead. What you choose to cut back on is up to you, but the key is to move exercise higher up your list of priorities.
The fitness coach highlights, “A couple of ways of doing this. One way, you just force it in. You don’t drop anything else. If you did that, your life would get a lot more busy, a little more overwhelming. But if you don’t want to do that, the other way to do it – the smarter way – is to add exercise to this list and remove something else from there. What do you remove? It depends on you. It depends on your life. That’s why prioritisation. If you can prioritise exercise, you will find time for it and you’ll realise there is something else that can take a backseat. Give it a shot and I guarantee you, you will find that you are a lot more consistent with exercise.”
