What obstacles do you face when trying to be physically active?

We've all heard the message before: exercise is critical to our health. In fact, the message gets thrown around so often that some of us are probably sick of hearing about how important regular physical activity is for our overall wellness. For many of our clients, thinking about how much they exercise, or how much they don't, is a source of significant stress. For the next couple of weeks we're going to explore some of the most common obstacles people can run into when trying to increase their physical activity.

Time as an obstacle

For some, it's an issue of time. The modern 9-5, 5 days a week work grind doesn't allow much wiggle room for exercise. Unless you're a morning person, or savvy enough to squeeze in some exercise on your lunch, most of your exercise opportunity exists after work. But what if you have a family? A second job? Your evenings can then be consumed by cooking, driving your kids around, or heading back to work.

What if you're a student? If we're talking university, you're in school all day and then studying or completing assignments at night. And don't forget, university students have jobs too! When you're grinding to get good grades and working just to pay your rent, it's easy to see how exercise gets moved to the back burner.

How do we make time for exercise?

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends 150-300 minutes of moderate aerobic physical activity per week, along with 2 sessions of full-body resistance training. Let's aim for the bare minimum: 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity+ 2 approximately 45 minute sessions of strength training. That gives us a total of 240 minutes per week of physical activity.

One of the ways to get to our total of 240 minutes is to break up our exercise sessions into smaller chunks. If you did your aerobic exercise in 20 minute chunks, you could sneak in 20 minutes on your lunch break and another 20 either before or after work. Do this 3 times throughout the 5-day work week and bang! 40 mins/day x 3 would give you 120 minutes! That leaves all weekend to get just 30 more minutes to meet your goal of 150. If you're a student, these twenty minute bouts of exercise could serve as a good reset before diving back into the books.

What about strength training? You can aim for once during the week and once on the weekend. This could be attending a strength based workout class with a friend, bodyweight/ resistance bands at home, or simply hitting the gym on your own!

Sticking to the plan

Okay so now we have a plan, how do we stick to it week in and week out? One of the best ways to ensure you stick to an exercise plan is to make it fun. Make sure the activities you pick are ones that you actually enjoy doing! If you dread the activity, you're not going to stick to the plan for very long. Listen to a podcast, music, or get a friend to tag along. Maybe you even reward yourself by going for a coffee with them after. Pairing up with a friend is great because it holds you accountable; it's harder to talk yourself out of exercising when you've made a commitment to go with a friend.

So to sum it all up:

1. WHO recommends we get 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity+ 2 sessions of strength training per week.

2. Break this down into smaller chunks (two 20 minute bouts of exercise instead of 40 minutes)

3. Make it fun!

4. Get a friend involved

Another thing to remember: just starting is the most important thing. Maybe the first week you aim for 3 twenty minute walks and build from there for the next week. Don't put pressure on yourself to figure it all out in the first 2-3 weeks; just start and aim to increase your activity by a little bit every week.

Happy moving!

WHO Physical Activity fact sheet

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/physical-activity