Training On A Tight Schedule

Training On A Tight Schedule

Individual lifestyles and workloads will vary massively from person to person, you may have a very flexible lifestyle and job where you have plenty of time to train, or on the other hand you could have an extremely inflexible lifestyle and job where you struggle to even find time to work out, socialise or even relax. If this is you then it tends to be a much more logical choice to structure your training around work and not your work around training.

I personally have an increasingly growing client base of hard working individuals who struggle to fit just three 45-60 minute training session in a week. Long working hours and busy lifestyles clearly being a barrier to training, I’ve had to come up with a solution to suit my client’s needs, which will allow them to achieve their goals in the time they have. I’m sure many other Personal Coaches and Trainers can relate to this issue, as it in my opinion, is becoming increasingly more common.

Now what I am going to suggest isn’t a new training style or get ripped quick scheme with only 5 minutes training a day, instead its quite simply a smart logical set of actions that will allow you to progress in aesthetic appearance, physical performance and overall health and well-being.

First identify your goal, make sure you clearly understand what it is you want to achieve, more importantly, once you have identified your goal, make sure it is a SMART goal (Specific/Measurable/Achievable/Realistic/Time) allowing you to identify how you will achieve it. Now depending on your schedule and availability, will determine how often you train, how long you train and what type of training you perform. If you want to get bigger, faster and stronger, your training style of choice would most likely be short HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), Strength, Speed, Power and/or Hypertrophy. If you want to improve your endurance and ability to perform longer, your training style of choice would most likely be Muscular Endurance, Aerobic, Long HIIT Style Training etc. Finally if you want a mix of both or are simply going for aesthetic results then vary through each training method to find what suits you best. In my experience Short HIIT, Strength & Hypertrophy work great for aesthetic results.

(NOTE: Some of the training methods may be unable to perform effectively and efficiently in short periods of times, due to the type of rest and recovery needed for the specific type of training. In this case I simply suggest you realise this… 0 training = 0 stimulation for muscle growth, fat loss and improved physical performance. Whereas even 15 minutes training 3-4 times a week will ensure you at least have a foundation to work from in the future.)

Look at your schedule, identify the days and times where you have at least 15 minutes free, this could be in the morning, afternoon or evening. Set your time slots and plan them in advance to ensure you are free to train at the specific times and days you have set. For example your set days may be Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, and your time slots may only be 15 minutes. Therefore your logical choice of training will be to perform HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training). On the other hand, your time slots may be around 45 minutes, in which you would most likely be best with HIIT, Hypertrophy or Power. If you have up to 2 hours available, you can most likely perform the majority of styles of training, HIIT, Hypertrophy, Strength, Endurance, Power etc. However this is post tailored to the tight schedule, therefore HIIT, Power & Hypertrophy being the most logical options.

Now here is where you will have to carry out a little research of your own, I’m not going to explain each training style and method to you on this post, therefore use the information I have suggested to you and look online what they mean and consist of.

Before I ramble on too much as I could easily go down numerous roads with this topic, covering training styles, structure, overload etc. Remember that training once a week is still better than not training at all. This post is for the general population and is here to guide and assist these individuals in making simple smart logical options to help benefit their overall health and well-being.

To conclude I’m going to sum everything up into a few bullet points: 

• Set your goal.
• Make your goal a SMART goal.
• Identify your availability.
• Block your training slots off as these times are YOUR times and no one else’s.
• Perform the training that best suits your availability and cater it towards your goal.
• Remember that training once a week is better than not training at all.
• Remember that the majority of training methods, even though they may not be specific to your goal, will still build a foundation for you to work from in the future.

 As usual I hope you found this post a good read and very easy to follow, during writing this post I felt myself heading down many different pathways (as always) but I decided to keep it only on the topic of training, not nutrition or psychology, as nutrition on a tight schedule is a whole different post completely. Any feedback is welcomed and if you have any questions on “training on a tight schedule” feel free to fire away!

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