Running a business takes a lot of time and effort, and sometimes it doesn’t leave a lot of time (or motivation) left for anything else, including your own fitness. The problem is that if you don’t take care of your health and fitness, your business is going to suffer eventually because you’ll burn out, and you won’t be able to continue. So, of course, you’ll need to work out how to get enough exercise into your personal life, no matter how busy you might be in your business life. The good news is there are some useful fitness hacks you can put in place that will definitely help you and ensure you stay as fit and healthy as possible. Read on to find out more.
Schedule Your Workouts Like Business Meetings
When you run a business, important business meetings are set in stone - they’re non-negotiable, and you’ll go to them whether you feel like it or not. It won’t matter how much motivation you have or how busy you are because you know how important those meetings are, and you make them a priority.
Why not do the same with your workouts and exercise? By scheduling them, just like a business meeting, you’ll be more likely to do the work, and soon enough, it will become a habit. Just treat them exactly the same as you would a business meeting, and everything will become much easier, and you’ll finally be making your health more of a priority.
Do Short, High-Intensity Workouts
If the reason that you don’t do much (or any) exercise to keep fit at the moment is that you think you have to spend hours and hours at the gym, that’s where you’re going wrong because that’s not the case at all. You can, of course, spend hours at the gym if you want to (and many people do because they enjoy it), but you can also get a lot of benefit from much shorter, high-intensity workouts.
High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is a great way to really make the most of your spare time, no matter how little of it you might have, and still get a workout that actually does something positive for your health and fitness. A 20 to 30-minute HIIT session can be enough to help make your heart much healthier and build up your muscle strength, for example, and it has to be easier to find a spare 30 minutes in the day compared to finding a spare hour or two.
Turn Your Office Into A Gym
Perhaps the issue is that you don’t want to leave your office (whether it’s a home-based one or an external one) to go to the gym or take a brisk walk or cycle, for example, because you’re worried you’re going to miss something important, or even miss a deadline. Sometimes there will be days when taking just a little time to exercise can feel like too much.
But what if you could multitask and exercise and work at the same time? There is a way to do it, and it’s almost like turning your office into a gym - in fact, it would probably mean that you do more exercise in the end than you would otherwise.
The answer is a desk treadmill or walking pad. This piece of equipment is a combination of a desk and a treadmill, so it allows you to get exercise done while you’re working - you no longer have to choose one or the other. And precisely because you no longer have to choose, you’ll get a lot more done, both in terms of your fitness and your work.
Use Technology To Make You Accountable
There are many different fitness apps and trackers on the market that you can use and sometimes even wear to help you stay accountable and motivated when it comes to keeping fit. You can use apps to track your workouts, set fitness goals, and set everything up to send you reminders if you’ve not been active for a while, for example.
It’s easy to ignore the fact that you really should be exercising when there’s no one and nothing there to remind you and push you, but when you have a beeping alert or a vibrating watch or anything else, it will be much harder to ignore, and you’ll feel keener to move and get fit because everything’s being tracked so you can see your progress.
Make Your Commute Your Exercise Time
This idea might not work for everyone, especially when it comes to remote workers, but in some cases, it could be the perfect solution for those business owners who don’t think they have enough time in the day to exercise; use your commute to get fit.
If you live quite close to your workplace and you normally drive or take the bus, for example, why not try walking or cycling instead? In that way, you’ll get your exercise done without having to break up your working day (although taking breaks is still important, of course), and your fitness levels will improve dramatically.
Delegate And Outsource
One of the biggest challenges when you’re a business owner is trying to do everything yourself. No matter how hard you try, you’re never going to have enough time to get everything done, and, in the end, that’s going to make your business suffer. It’s also going to make your health suffer because you’ll be seriously stressed, plus you won’t have time to keep on top of your fitness by exercising.
That’s why it’s such a good idea to delegate and outsource where you can. When you can hand tasks off to others, you’ll find you have a lot more free time to start taking care of yourself, and the knock-on effect of that is that you’ll be healthier, happier, and in a better frame of mind to run your business. In other words, by letting go of some aspects of control - which admittedly can be hard - you can benefit yourself and your business all in one go. It’s definitely something to consider.
