“I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME!”

Most folks over the age of 30 have shit to do. You’ve got a young family and/or parents to look after, and a demanding job, or a business to run, so the most common reason for not being in better shape in this demographic is:

“I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME”

About 80% of the time, this isn’t the problem that it looks like.

It’s often THREE problems standing on each other’s shoulders inside a big trenchcoat, holding up a sign labeled “not enough time” to disguise themselves.

So let’s break them down:

Problem #1:

Not understanding what you’re setting out to do.

You probably THINK what you need to do is get really strong and get really fit, and that that will solve everything.

That typically demands specialised equipment like barbells - which means spending time driving to a gym. It means big long warm ups to get ready. It means lifting heavy weights that force you to rest 3-5 minutes between sets. And then it means pushing a shed (or some other God-awful thing) up and down a runway until you puke, fall over and see visions of white buffalo in the sky.

That takes a lot of time, is hard to recover from, and frankly, you don’t have the energy for it right now.

But getting super-strong and super-fit isn’t ACTUALLY what you want.

The result you want right now is to look a bit better, feel a bit better and be a bit healthier.

You’ll look a bit better by gaining a little muscle and losing a little fat. That is NOT the same thing as getting strong and fit.

You’ll feel a bit better by eating food with more nutrients, getting 20 minutes more sleep most nights and doing some easy aerobic activity like walking, hiking or playing with your kids/dogs.

You’ll be healthier by doing all of that every week for the next 40 years.

Now that you know that, we can confront

Problem #2

You don’t know how to workout in a time-efficient way.

If all you know is lifting the heaviest weights possible then doing “go-til-you-puke” conditioning workouts, you very understandably think that working out takes a long time.

But it doesn't have to.

You can gain muscle mass from almost any rep range where you bring your muscles to the point of near failure.

Studies show time and time again that people who lift sets of 5 reps to near-failure gain just as much muscle mass as people who do sets of 3 reps, who gain just just as much muscle mass as people who do sets of 8 reps, 10, 15, 20 or even 30 reps as long as they’re brought to near-failure.

They all yield more or less the same changes to the shape of your body, but they take VASTLY different amounts of time.

If you’re going to bench press to build muscle - you’ll send just as much stimulus to your muscles by doing 5 sets of 5 reps to near-failure with 100kg and you will with 5 sets of 15 reps with 65kg taken to near-failure.

So if two guys walk up to a bar (no pun intended), the 5x5 guy has to spend 20 mins warming up to that weight, then rest for 5 mins between every set - a whole extra 20 mins solely on resting. However, the 5x15 guy can just do one set with the empty bar, one more warm-up with 45kg, then rest 90 seconds between each set and go on with his life.

First guy spent 42 minutes getting the same muscle-gain stimulus the second guy got in 10.2 minutes.

You probably can’t make the 5 hours per week to train like the first guy, but the second guy can get the same muscle gain results in like 90 minutes per week if he’s smart.

If you’re short on time, don’t spend it on workouts that you don’t need. Go for the minimum effective dose, and build on it later.

That brings us to

Problem #3

This one might be a little out of left field, but it's often the more subtle issue lurking at the base of all this - you’re not ready to do these little small things.

Once you hear that you can get the results you want from just eating a few more vegetables, lifting some light weights and doing really easy aerobic work, a little voice in your head might start protesting:

“Oh but that’s not enough! I need to be doing X, Y and Z!”

That’s the sound of your ego not willing to let go of the idea of you lifting 6 plates while screaming in victory...so rather than letting go of that vision you shrink away and do nothing instead of lifting your shamefully light dumbbells.

Doing nothing might be temporarily more comfortable, but it’s not going to do anything to solve your problems.

Thankfully, there’s one very simple response to the “that’s not enough” voice - you just tell it “Prove it”.

How the hell do you know? Where’s your evidence? Where’s your data? You’re just making shit up.

Where is the 6 weeks where you lifted the dumbbells that were “too light” and didn’t feel and look way better by the end of it?

Where is the 2 weeks where you got up and went to sleep at the same time every day and discovered that it did not lift your mood, didn’t improve your appetite regulation and it didn’t help you lose any fat.

Prove it.

Go do it, and measure the results in metres, kilograms and seconds, not in vague feelings about what’s “enough” or not.

You might be pleasantly surprised by what you discover.

Now you might say that’s all very well and good, but you still feel like you need more help putting it all together for your specific situation. If that’s you, you could think about doing some 1-to-1 coaching. If you give me a couple of details over on this page, we could discuss the best options for getting you where you want to go in fitness in a way that works with the time you have now, rather than trying to force more where it might not be available.