Too Busy To Exercise? Do This Instead... Ep.3

Aaron Duvall (@jaduvall) and Craig Conley (@craigconley26) discuss how to fit exercise into a busy lifestyle.  Common practices to improve your health if you're stressed, overwhelmed, and tired.  How to get the most bang for your buck if you don't have time to exercise.

00:11

Thank you for joining us for the third episode of the busy fit podcast. If you missed episode two, we discussed some common misconceptions around macro counting and just around kind of different nutrition programs in general. Today we're here with Craig and Aaron. We're going to talk about fit exercise into a crazy busy lifestyle. So thanks Craig and Aaron for joining us. Absolutely happy to be here.

00:38

We'll start off with our first question. How important is consistency in a workout routine, especially for those limited with time? Yeah, that's a really good question. I guess one of the operative word, or the operative word there is obviously consistency, but I think that consistency is maybe different than some people realize. I think intuitively when I hear like, oh, I need to be consistent with training, it's like, okay, that means I have to

01:08

work out five days a week and do so much stuff or check so many boxes when consistency is really just like, hey, can I be a little bit more realistic? Yeah, one week maybe I can get five days a week, but the next week it's gonna be a busy work schedule, I can only get one or two days in. But at least throughout that whole month, I check the box of hey, at least every week that I got one or two days in. I think having.

01:34

that expectation of what consistency really is, is very important. You know, if we don't have at least some level of, you know, that realistic consistency, then the goals that we're trying to achieve, whether that be just, you know, maintain a healthy lifestyle, get stronger, get fitter, get leaner, whatever that may be, like that's gonna be...

01:59

harder to get if we don't have that base level of consistency. But again, I think going back to where like consistency doesn't mean that like, okay, you sign up for a workout program and it's this five days a week of training for an hour to an hour and a half each day. And if you miss one of those days, well then you're inconsistent. Like that's not really realistic for most people, unless you're a college or pro athlete, which you know, I wish I was, uh, it's rigging.

02:28

not really that feasible. So if we can at least look back on, let's say like a month and say like, hey, you know what, every week I at least got something in, work towards my goals, like that type of consistency, that realistic consistency is gonna show that actual objective improvement from that week one to week four or five, ideally. So yeah, consistency is very important, but consistency may mean a different thing from one person to the next too. Yeah.

02:57

I really liked that Aaron. I think what came to mind as you were explaining it was consistency in your intentionality, essentially. And that can only go so far sometimes. Obviously, if you're intentionally hitting zero workouts every week, like that's not gonna help you. But if you, to your example, if one week you hit five because you planned for five, and the next week you have a crazy busy schedule, you're traveling.

03:24

and you intentionally plan, okay, I can only hit two this week. That's consistent, right? And then the next week you intentionally plan, all right, I've got three. And then a long walk on the fourth day that I want to get it. That's intentionality and consistency with that is going to take you a whole lot further than, you know, trying to stick with the program and falling off. Uh, because you were inconsistent and then you just chalked everything.

03:53

Yeah, I think another point to make is that acute, like early on consistency is probably the most important to like, I was talking with one of our clients, and we're talking about the difference between like, you know, discipline and motivation. And sometimes we have that motivation early on. But motivation in and of itself doesn't really breed consistency in more, you know, chronically. If we can get that like,

04:22

acute consistency, that's what helps build actual discipline and that discipline is what will lead to greater consistency, greater results later down the road. But that again, that acute consistency and that motivation early on carrying into developing discipline, I think is really important too. Can you discuss the importance of setting realistic fitness goals for someone that's busy and has a crazy lifestyle? Yeah, I'm gonna kick that one off too because it

04:51

I think part of it kind of ties into what I was just saying, like being realistic with what we want out of our training and our lifestyle is really important because it's easy for that acute motivation to really wither away. If our motivation, if my motivation is I want to be the best Olympic weightlifter in the United States and you know, that's my goal and if I don't get it in the next two months, then...

05:18

I'm a failure and then I lose that motivation. I lose that discipline because the goals that I set for myself were completely unrealistic. So figuring out what realistic goals really means. When I talk with clients and coaches and I like the term, you almost want to like, I don't want to get it wrong, undersell and over deliver. Set those, set more base realistic goals for yourself.

05:48

you know, hey, maybe it's just consistency based or it's that frequency based. Like for four weeks, I want to average three sessions a week that are at least 30 minutes. And by the end of the month, you average four sessions a week. That was 45 minutes where you crushed your goal. Then again, that acute motivation turns into something a little bit greater. It's just that snowball effect. It keeps rolling and it keeps getting bigger. So what that realistic fitness goal may be,

06:18

for one person or another, it could be completely different. But the importance of making that goal realistic is really, really high though. It makes me think of the concept that we talk about sometimes with clients being smart goals. With the acronym of smart standing for specific, the S being specific, the M being measurable, the A attainable, R relevant, T time bound. When you go into that attainable side, I think some people

06:47

either skip over it or, you know, they want to make this really big grandiose goal, which is great. And we want you to achieve those great big goals. But if we set you up for failure from the very start, you're probably not going to continue to try and hit that great big goal. Starting out with something attainable is huge and helps to not only build momentum, but build confidence. I think one of the biggest things that helps someone...

07:15

build confidence in a skill or in an area is proof that they can do it, right? If I'm trying to learn a new skill and I complete consistently fail over and over again, I'm not going to continue. It's very unlikely that I'll continue to do it. But if I can build small wins, I'll continue to progress. So that consistency, which is sounds like the key word for this, you know, show so far, but the consistency is huge. And the realistic goals that we set helps to build that consistency.

07:45

Obviously, I think people have a perception of what it takes to be fit and be healthy and be lean and kind of take care of themselves. And so the reality is most people have kids, they have jobs, they have social commitments, they have family commitments, they have all these other things that impact today. So what are some realistic strategies for people to have to balance that busy lifestyle and balance things with their family to still prioritize their health?

08:14

This is one that we talk on with a lot of our clients. I think it is a really practical way to do it, but I didn't think of it until, you know, more recently, setting an appointment with yourself. And it sounds almost silly, but I think in life we

08:38

have appointments for work. We have appointments for our kids. We have appointments for our cars. We have appointments for doctors. We have all these appointments that we prioritize and we cannot miss, right? We try to be on time. If we cannot make it, we make sure to call and try and reschedule. We put a huge level of importance on all these other appointments. But when it comes to prioritizing, you know, 30 minutes to an hour for ourselves to get a workout in, we're getting to that on time, we push it off.

09:09

So prioritizing and setting an appointment with yourself, hey, three o'clock this afternoon, I have appointment with me and a barbell. Like that's what it's gotta be. And you cannot miss that appointment. It's gotta be just as important as the million dollar client that you are working with at your company. And I think when we shift our mindset into setting that critical million dollar appointment for ourself, it...

09:35

almost becomes more practical and helps us to build things into our schedule, which at the end of the day, I know for me, if it's not scheduled in, it's probably not going to happen. So what advice would you give to someone that say they're really struggling with that balance? You know, they haven't been able to prioritize their health in any way, shape or form because they've been going a million miles now. What's the first thing they should do? What's the first step that they should start with to start getting their health back on track?

10:00

when really the ground, they may be at ground zero where they've truly done nothing for one, two, three, 10 years. I would say the first thing I would look at are the major stressors in their life. It's not even, hey, where can we, what window can we get a workout in? It's not necessarily, what do I need to eat next? It's like, what is taking up the time and the mental energy or the mental space in your life?

10:30

that you can't even think about prioritizing these things. And identifying those, at the very least, you know what they are, and then maybe can think of strategies in order to work around them or potentially eliminate them from your life. There's some things I know in my life that, you know, I'm doing and I'm doing consistently, and then I take a second and look, I'm like, I don't even need to be doing this. This is just causing me unnecessary stress. And so if we can identify those things, it frees up

11:00

not only mental space, but also sometimes physical space in our days to be able to prioritize ourselves. To Craig's point, and maybe in addition, talking about prioritization is definitely the biggest thing. But with the, again, realistic understanding, one of my favorite quotes of my dad would always ask me when I would, I don't know, get maybe too over my head with something, he'd be like, well, hey, bud, like,

11:29

How do you eat an elephant? I'd be like, what? You guys know how do you eat an elephant?

11:37

bite at a time. One bite at a time. That's right. So it's kind of like, you know, the marathon starts with a single step, right? Early on, if you have such a busy schedule and you have these other things, it's not realistic to say, okay, well, I'm a single mother of three and I have a full-time job and going to school and doing this and I still need to train every day. That may not be realistic.

12:06

Right? But if you can still take that first bite, find out what that relative first bite or first step is for you. If that may be, okay, Sundays, like I know in the afternoon, I have 30 minutes, I can take the kids for a walk. Okay? That's one more walk or one more bout of activity that you had that you weren't doing prior to.

12:34

And it may be those baby steps. And I think once we start to make those type of baby steps, we realize other things that either we can take away that may be unnecessary of like, you know what? This was great. I enjoyed that. I feel better. I would probably rather do that again than, you know, binge watch this Netflix show on Wednesday night. And again, going back to the snowball effect of like, once we take that first step.

13:00

We make that first realistic step for whatever that may be. And it's going to be different for everybody. But if we can take that first step or take that first bite, eventually the whole elephant's going to get eaten. That's great. So what's the first thing that you should prioritize for someone? Say they're 35 to 50. They haven't worked out in a while. They likely want to lose some weight, get rid of some pain and just overall feel better. And there's aerobic activity, there's strength training, there's all these different things that they can do.

13:29

What do you feel like is step one from an exercise standpoint from the place that they should actually start at?

13:36

I'll kick that off. That's a really good question. And it's gonna be context dependent. Like I think depending on if they do have, even pretty vague goals of like, I just wanna lose weight or I want to be able to run a 5K or I wanna do this, there's gonna be some direction he did from, some sort of bias internally from whatever person. But generally speaking, if there's like a completely blank slate where there's like,

14:06

clue where to start. I'm definitely biased, but one of my weightlifting coach, my favorite quote from him was always, a lot of really good things happen when you just get stronger. So like physiologically speaking, when we are more robust, more strong of a human being, it makes the capabilities of, okay, if I want to build that aerobic capacity to run and do this or

14:35

I want to build more of that like a lack that twitchiness and I want to run a race or do a CrossFit workout and do or compete in powerlifting, whatever it may be, it doesn't matter. But building that general base of strength, that kind of foundational strength, I think is a really, really good step one. And there's a million ways to do that. I think generally speaking, finding a program where...

15:05

you can hit four or five of like the main movements that we see like you three, two, three days a week, you have some sort of squat pattern, some sort of hinge pattern, push, a pull, and maybe some sort of ab, core or carry type exercise, sprinkle in maybe a little bit of like, you know, volume oriented cardio, like just go jog for a few minutes or ride a bike for this or that like.

15:33

The foundation that I think that creates as you start to develop with that more specific goal, maybe later on That's that's the strongest foundation. I think we can set again. There's a million different ways to do it. But To be like very 30 000 foot view that that would be my advice Yeah, erin You know, I wish we could have some sort of debate here Maybe it might be fun to you know, go strength versus cardio, but i'm on page with you too. I would say

16:03

that having that foundation of strength is critical and irreplaceable. And you know, Aaron mentioned earlier that he wants to be the second best weightlifter in the world. I have no desire to do that whatsoever. I just finished running a half marathon. So I'm on the other end of that training life, I guess. But I agree that having that foundation of strength is huge. And that's where I'd want to start out with for people.

16:33

One, and just the idea, the concept that strength takes a lot longer to develop and a lot longer to lose. From a scientific perspective, your aerobic capacity, your cardio base, it can come pretty quickly relatively, and it can also relatively go away pretty quickly, but it's easier to come in and out of that. Whereas gaining strength...

17:00

and gaining sound technique and sound movement in some strength movements is a little more difficult, takes a little more time, but it's so, so worth it. And so, yeah, I would say definitely focus on strength from an exercise perspective. Justin, your question actually made me think of the overall health and wellness picture. And I'd say outside of exercise, I would look at sleep. If they can improve on their sleep,

17:31

So many things are going to be improved outside of that, even if they didn't start working out and didn't start eating correctly or eating in a healthier way. Better sleep could impact their life in a tremendous way. So strength and then outside of exercise, sleep. I do like the idea, Craig, of maybe having a, I don't know, debate the cardio verse strength. It's kind of like chicken or the egg. Like they're both crucial.

17:57

I think having that aerobic foundation only makes getting stronger easier and getting stronger only makes building that aerobic foundation easier. So both very important. I think that early on, the neurological benefit that we can get from developing some sort of base strength, like you talked about, like, you know, strength is really hard to build or it takes a little bit longer to build. But that residual decline is also, it takes a little bit longer as well.

18:27

But that acute strength that we get, if I haven't done any sort of training in years, that first month of training, I'm gonna see the highest exponential rate of improvement that I'll ever see from a training perspective. After that, it's definitely gonna slow down, but that foundational, that kind of ground zero training that I have for those first four or five weeks from a strength perspective, building that neurological control where I know how to operate my body.

18:54

I know how to go through those basic movement patterns well. I can load those movement patterns to some extent. Again, that just makes the subsequent training of whatever it may be, running, rowing, crossfit, lifting, jumping, whatever, a hell of a lot easier. Yeah. It actually makes me think of a client that I had a couple of years back. He was a 14-year-old kid.

19:23

had never worked out formally in his life. Like he had done pushups in his bedroom and that was about it. I was going into high school and wanted to put on some size and just feel more confident. And so we started with this program and we went out and did a run one day and it was one of the most uncoordinated runs I had ever seen in my entire life. And I had worked with athletes before this for a while and it was bad.

19:53

And so he was just not, he didn't have the movement pattern or the strength in order to run properly, was kind of how I pictured it. And we started to add in more lower body movements, just more strength movements overall. I saw his squat improve, I saw his legs become more defined, I saw his lunges become more coordinated, but I also saw his run.

20:21

getting better and like the coordination behind all of it getting better and he became just a better athlete overall and I am hard pressed. It's hard not to believe that the squatting and the muscle or the strength that we did she didn't translate over to that run. Be hard to believe. Yeah, it's all the same bucket though like whether it's fitness or strength and I know I'm going off in a little bit of a tangent.

20:51

it's still all what all qualifies like this fitness and health, right? So, you know, doing there's going to be more opportunistic ways to develop one quality versus another. But, you know, generally speaking, and the kind of the population that we're talking about that Justin alluded to, like, I'm not saying it doesn't matter because it does. And there's definitely like

21:19

more advantageous ways to go about it. But that first step has still got to be finding a realistic goal, building a schedule, setting time to it, getting that early on consistency so that we have that discipline and more chronic motivation so that whatever the actual long-term and more specific goal may be that we have a foundation that we can operate with to actually build our pyramid a little bit taller and reach that goal.

21:49

We've talked a lot about goals for the individual to improve their health. Uh, but one thing that we've seen commonly is when someone starts to prioritize their own health, they start to feel like maybe they're giving in other areas, whether it be, you know, time with their family, their loved one, uh, you know, that social environment. And there seems to be like a lot of initial guilt attached to that. And I guess how do people overcome that mental barrier of feeling guilty for setting aside a time or setting aside time?

22:19

to just focus on improving their own health. One of the things that we always come back to, or at least that I always come back to, is you are making yourself a better version of yourself for the people that you want to be around by taking that 30 minutes to an hour. And if your value, or if what you want, is to be around with them, whether it's your family, your friends, whoever it is, if you want to be around with them for...

22:48

as long as possible. And if you want to provide the most value to them for as long as possible, if you want to be the best you can be with them for as long as possible, this is a non-negotiable. It's not taking away from them, it's adding to them by adding to yourself in a way. And obviously that's easier to say sometimes than it is to practice.

23:19

believe is 100% true.

23:23

Yeah, that's probably the best answer. I guess the only thing that I could really add is that they're, you know, taking care of yourself and spending time with family or being productive with work or whatever, it doesn't have to be mutually exclusive. You can, I made the example earlier, that single mom can still go on the walk with their kids while they ride their bikes.

23:50

I get my cardio training in when I have my, I'm sending emails with like a laptop or my phone in hand while I'm on our assault bike or doing a walk on an incline treadmill. It may not be getting, you know, a hundred percent out of both worlds, but I'm at least

24:13

making it to where again, those two different entities aren't mutually exclusive. And it's, I think, another misconception that we can probably lay to rest that what you have to do is put your headphones in, put your hoodie over your head, and it's you time. And there's a lot of time. Yeah, like when I'm in my training, that is also my time when I can't afford that. But if I...

24:39

if my fiance, if I'm if I have a weekend off and I may have wanted to work out on a Saturday or something and she's like, No, I really want to do something or spend the great let's go on a badass hike and make me work for that, you know, extra dinner or something that weekend that we'll go do as well. Like it doesn't always have to be like

25:03

you got to go to the gym and separate yourself from everything else. It can be that. And that can sometimes be the most productive times in your training, but that doesn't have to be the norm. Right. That's great. And so I think the next thing we see, you know, generally just kind of busy people in general is, and we touched on a little bit earlier is stress. You know, they get overwhelmed by everything that's going on and it's easy to do that because life's throwing things at you constantly there's different stimulus, you can look at your phone and kind of

25:32

constantly see what's going on in the world and there's that FOMO effect. What are some things that these people can do to combat that stress to maybe bring a little bit more calmness and peace to their day or into their mind to free them up to potentially start actually making progress on their health?

25:51

I think from, I think one thing I guess point to make, and I don't think this directly answers your question, but inadvertently at least makes a point with it. From like an endocrine standpoint, from hormone, sleep quality, social quality standpoint,

26:11

Adding to a realistic level, like adding training or adding some level of activity to our lives is inevitably going to help with stress by itself. You can also do the opposite if we add too much cortisol spiking and then we're just a rolling dumpster fire. You don't want that either.

26:41

exercise stress, hormonally, physiologically speaking, has a really, really nice effect to combating alleviating personal stress. I don't know, again, if that really directly answers that question, but I think it's an important point to make that just adding, again, an appropriate level of training can in and of itself help with that stress.

27:09

I think on top of adding in training and just healthy habits, we have to add in boundaries into our life. And I think boundaries sometimes can seem like a taboo word. I think sometimes when you're in certain circles, boundaries almost are frowned upon, but they are the healthiest thing that we can create within any circle. And it allows us to show up better for them.

27:39

So when you mentioned, hey, we have all these inputs coming into our life. We have our phone going off constantly. We have work, we have our family, everything. We have to set boundaries around our phone. We have to set boundaries around when we're working. We have to set boundaries around family time and things like that. Stuff that is really, really good and really important. There has to be boundaries set around them and you...

28:05

All those are individual and those are personalized. So one person's boundaries aren't going to be the same as the other, but they have to be clear and they have to be communicated. I think a lot of times when we get into stressful situations and we look back at them, we can probably find a boundary that was crossed or not clearly communicated. And that's what led to the stress. Great. Well, I think that's a, that's a wrap on episode three of the busy fit podcast. So thanks, Aaron. Thanks, Craig, for being here.

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and stay tuned for episode four.