Any exercise is better than none :-)

We all have varied, busy lives that never fit the neat structured exercise plans we read about, or make for ourselves. Sometimes we only find 15 minutes free in a day for some quick exercise. And if that’s the only time we have available that day, then that’s enough.

Ideally you’ll find time for more structured exercise at least once a week, but don’t beat yourself up if you struggle with your schedule, you’re only human, just do what you can, that already puts you ahead of most people <3

Can you walk to a place instead of drive daily?

I replaced a 10 minute commute with a 45 minute walk. Got me walking nearly 8 hours a week. ~20 miles.

I think building it into your routine rather than making it an event is key.

I do 20-30 minutes every second day.

One day - Body weight exercises at home, variations of pushups and tabata.

Two days later - Exercise bike, burning 300 calories in 30 mins.

Nothing special but keeps my heart, arms and legs pretty strong without a huge time investment.

It all depends on your goal. Wanna look ripped, you need hours in the gym. Want to just have a body that doesn’t hurt and feels good, then its enough with moderate exercise.

Two ways:

• prioritize your time. If something is important to you then you adjust other things to make time. Such as spending less time on social media aka lemmy.

• shorter duration, higher intensity.

For you if you’re short on time id focus on running- walking, pushing yourself to run more frequently than if you had the full 2 hours. The idea is to get your heart rate up higher than normal

You’re aware of low-volume HIIT? Max 15 minutes per day, evidence-based for cardiovascular health same as “normal” exercise. Not for building muscle afaik, and finding your own among the many more-or-less tested ones can be a chore. The popular “Scientific 7-minute workout” and it new versions would probably be a good place to start, and are targeted more for building strength afaik.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37939367/ https://archive.nytimes.com/well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/the-scientific-7-minute-workout/

Edit: Oh, and to answer your question, I don’t. I do move about by bike and play BeatSaber because it’s fun, otherwise decomposing.

For me personally; no excuses. I have nasty ADHD and am very dependent on habit. I have to make a conscious effort to establish any activity as a habit if I want any hope of following through. This forces me to have a ‘no excuses’ type relationship with things like running, my favourite workout activity, if I want to keep it up in the long run.

My workouts are organized such that on any day, the order of the exercises is also their importance. So if there’s ever a need to cut things short, I still do the same workout but I’ll cut it short somewhere in the middle.

If I know what I’m losing a whole workout somewhere, then there’s one of two things I can do. If my body is well recovered, then on the last workout before the break, I’ll bring the intensity way up with lots of myo-reps and drop sets and increase the number of sets. If I’m in need of recovery, then I don’t do anything special and just treat those days as a deload.

The question you should be asking is what you’re trying to achieve with each element of your workout and how important it is for you. For example, what do you get out of stair climbing that you don’t from running-walking or stretching? If there isn’t anything specific, it may well be that it doesn’t matter what you do as long as you do something. Consider also what your body might need recovery from. For example, does running hurt your joints? If so, then maybe use that opportunity to take a break from it.

You do what you can, when you can.

Like, I’m disabled now, so the days of three hour long dedicated workout sessions are long gone. I can barely manage anything that takes longer than cooking a decent meal, and the more impact there is, the shorter the time gets. So, you know, serious cardio is out.

However, you can exercise anywhere, any time, assuming the situation makes it feasible at all (might have issues at work, etc).

So, you cram things in. Sitting at a desk for fifteen? Keep your legs moving. Reading files, you can do so while finding some kind of activity that fits how you’re reading. Laptop on your knees, maybe you do some curls. Have a tablet you can use, or paper files, do some pushups while you read.

If you’re going to have only one single session, make it cardio. Nothing else gives the same time/benefit ratio, and you can do different cardio depending on where you are. So, you might only have an hour, use it running since you don’t need a specific gym or piece of gear.

Gotta work with what you’ve got

I switched to working out at home and saved a whole bunch of time I used to spend getting to and from the gym, plus all the faffing about waiting to get on the stations I wanted to use. Its not going to work for everyone but if you can do some sort of workout at home or at work if you lucky enough to work somewhere that has facilitates, then you can save a whole bunch of time.

As others have mentioned switching to high intensity can give you as big an impact in a lot less time. Unless you training for endurance events spending a couple of hours working out everyday can actually be counter productive. I used to train twice a day six days a week, an hours weights in the morning then two to three hours of BJJ/Kickboxing and I never made the same strength gains as when I toned that shit down.

Two hours is pretty excessive, you should be doing 10 minutes stretching tops, unless its an actual stretching workout such as yoga or you are working out an injury. Spending an hour on a stair master or a runner is only good if you actually challenging your heart rate during that time, and then only if you working on endurance for a reason.

https://youtu.be/InOqdEBysfM

Royal Canadian Air Force workout.

15 minute full body workout.

really works.

Sounds like your regular workout is mostly cardio and legs. So maybe the days you don’t have time would be good for some upper body and core strength building.

I think it’s important to note that any amount of exercise appears to be better than none at all ^[1][2][3].

This is a shorter answer than I typically would write, but any sort of exercise program should be atuned to your specific circumstances, since if it’s not practical to execute upon it, then it’s not going to sustainably achieve its objectives.

As for me personally, I wrote my program based on a friend’s five-day-per-week program, which splits the days into: arm day, back/shoulders day, chest day, leg day, and core day. I specifically do not want to be overworking certain muscle groups without adequate rest. Each day takes no more than 60-70 minutes, including warm ups.

Might I suggest posing in c/gym or c/homegym for advice on how to tune your current program; there shouldn’t be a need for a full rip-and-replace.

For me I paid for not only the gym but the trainer to help me build the routine and habit. I know that’s not an option for all but I did this to make myself accountable. That and I’m tired of my back going out time and time again.