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5 Productive Fitness Habits
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ShareHere are five ways to be even more efficient with your fitness routine
They’re impressive, and exhausting. How DO they fit it all in?
According to most books and articles written on the habits of highly productive people, they write a lot of to-do lists. They only focus on one thing at a time. They get up early. They exercise. They do their most important task first. They don’t read emails on the weekend. They have a daily morning routine.
While highly productive people have found ways to fit exercise into their busy lives, can someone who might not be a textbook productive person find ways to hack their fitness routines to at least make THAT part of their day a bit more efficient (and more likely to be done)?
They sure can.
Here are five ways that highly (and non-highly) productive people can be even MORE productive with their fitness routines. (And I’m not even going to include the standard “get up early”, either.)
5 Fitness Habits of Highly Productive People
1. Get an activity tracker with built-in GPS and/or heart rate monitoring. Because who has time to put on a chest strap heart rate monitor before a workout? Simply press a few buttons on the activity tracker you’re already wearing to track your workout -- no manual entering of data or messing around with multiple technologies required. Better yet, get an activity tracker (like the FitBit Charge HR) that auto-recognizes when you start to run, walk or cycle and tracks your workout all on its own.
2. Make your lunch, breakfast or dinner in between sets. If you work out at home -- and you probably already do if you’re a highly productive person -- do a set of exercises with a pair of dumbbells when you’re doing other things, such as making lunch or dinner or putting away dishes. This is something I’ve personally done before to save time in the morning while making my lunch, and it goes something like this: 10 dumbbell curls in the living room, then walk over to the kitchen and slice an orange. Do another set of curls, slice a mango. Another set, slap some peanut butter on rice cakes. Do 10 squats in the kitchen, place a mug of coffee in the microwave to be heated up just before I leave for work. Another 10 squats, find clothes I’m going to wear that day and lay them out on my bed. You get the picture.
3. Supersets. Hitting opposing muscle groups one right after the other is the most efficient way to strength train if you’re simply looking to get it done and keep your heart rate up at the same time. Combining upper and lower body moves (like a squat with an overhead press) with push/pulls exercises (push-up and dumbbell row) is the best way to fit it all in in the shortest amount of time.
4. Walk and email. Although I highly recommend unplugging and enjoying nature when you’re out for a walk, sometimes you just need to save time and reply to a few emails while you can. I often respond to emails on my work commute, which is only a 10-minute walk, or when I’m doing a 20-minute cool down walk on the treadmill after a workout.
5. What pants? If you work out at home, who’s got time to put on another layer of clothing if you don’t really need to? Socks, shoes, underwear and a sports bra will do just fine. (I’m only sort-of kidding with this one.)