5 Training Tips For Busy People

You're a busy person right?

You live a largely fulfilled life, but that means that the time you could be using from training and eating well is in competition with a lot of other things.

Your career. Your family life. You may have children. You may have pets. You may spend a lot of time travelling. You may be extremely social. You may care for others. You may volunteer for a good cause.

Whatever it is, it often makes keeping time for yourself in the form of health and fitness a bit harder than you'd like.

But that doesn't need to be an excuse, or a reason to not keep yourself and your health and fitness a regular priority.

I work with a lot of traditionally busy people. I help them in person and online with the strength training and nutrition, and they achieve great things.

Here are 5 tips that I think are particularly helpful, and I think they can really help you too.

1. Protect Your Time

Tip number one is to protect your time.

It doesn't have to be much, you can do an awful lot of good in not a lot of time, but it DOES have to be yours.

And you DO deserve it. It's just that when you're busy and in demand, no-one is going to give it to you. They'll only ever take it.

So it's up to YOU to take it for yourself, protect it, and use it for your own health and wellbeing.

The best way to do this is to literally schedule it into your calendar as you would any other appointment. It doesn't have to be visible to everyone else exactly what you're doing, but it does have to be clear you're not available.

Do this early doors, way before the time snatchers come knocking, and ideally make it recurring. If you book in 30-45 minutes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning at 7:30am to exercise, quite quickly the people around you will learn that you're never available at that time.

Protect YOUR time. YOU deserve it.

2. Delegate PLENTY

If you're doing well at work, you gain more responsibilities. As the responsibilities accumulate, successful people being to delegate tasks that; A) Are very time consuming. B) You're not good at. C) You don't enjoy. D) Can be done without your unique skillset.

To be successful at your health and nutrition you can and should do exactly the same.

You can delegate your programming to a skilled coach who can put together a great training plan for you and have it ready to go for Monday to save you Googling "The Best Program For 6 Pack Abs" again for the 1000th time.

You can delegate improving your technique to the same coach to make sure you complete your workouts effectively every time and get to your end goal sooner.

You can delegate your cooking to a meal prep company if you've never been that good of a cook or don't enjoy the process of cooking.

You can delegate the task of shopping to any big supermarket with a click and collect or home delivery service because you don't need your exact skillset to walk around and pick products off the shelf for 30-40 minutes.

And the best thing about this?

There are people who are ready, willing, and very happy to do these things for you if you want them to. You don't need to feel bad about delegating these things.

3. Convenience Is Key.

When you're pressed for time, every small decision (and a lot of big ones), will be decided by whats most convenient.

Got 10 minutes to grab some food? You'll grab whats closest.

Got 30 minutes to train? You won't spend half of that travelling to and from a gym.

So you need to spend a little time making the convenient options better.

Convenient meals like overnight oats for breakfast or frozen microwave lunches.

Healthy cupboards for when you need to grab something quick.

Some home workout equipment.

A gym on the route between work and home.

A training program you can access on your phone at any moment, any time.

This stuff is GAME CHANGING, so spend just a little time organising these things each week. Sunday's are great for this.

4. Prioritise

When you're tight on time you have to drop the minutia and focus on the big things that move the needle forward.

Why do lateral raise, front raises, and tricep extensions when you could do military presses?

Why do 5 sets when your could benefit from 2?

Why spend ages assessing your macros when you can just get your calories right?

Why vary your workouts hugely when you could accumulate work on a simple and efficient format?

Change your focus to concepts like the minimal effective dose, do less do it better, and keep it simple stupid and you'll get a LOT further that you'd imagine.

Mainly because it's simple, its efficient, and it's effective because you can commit to it for the long run.

5. Focus.

Training for 60 minutes with half your mind on training and half of your mind on work doesn't get you far.

Training for 30 minutes with your complete focus on getting better is really productive.

Sitting and eating when replying to emails leave no enjoyment of food and many rushed emails.

Sitting, stopping, breathing for a second whilst you enjoy some food will renew your energy for better work.

When you're busy, the worst thing is when your attention gets separated over too many things.

Whatever it is you're doing in a given moment, be in it. Be REALLY in it.

You'll be rewarded for being great, and the best way to do that is to be focussed. One thing at a time. Be in the moment. Do your best work.

I really hope this helps.

Ian.