Last weekend, I had the pleasure of sitting down with fellow trainer Eva Redpath, who is Canada’s Nike Master Trainer and based out of Toronto, to talk everything health and fitness. Among other things, we chatted about busy lives and how we work with our clients to help make their fitness a priority. Whether we were referring to busy moms, workaholics, students or anyone else that complains about being too busy to find time to get in their workouts, the basic strategies to making it work did not change. With the holiday season now upon us, our schedules are only going to get busier and trying to fit in workouts between work lunches and Christmas parties is only going to become more difficult.
One strategy we discussed is simply waking 20 minutes earlier, just 20 minutes, on the days where you know there will be no chance of fitting in a lunch time run or an after work boot camp. Have your workout gear ready to go (or just do it in your pajamas) and spend 20 minutes running through some full body exercises. You can choose a workout from the NTC app on your smartphone, or pick 5 of your own favourite moves and run through them four times for 60 seconds each. For example, you could do squats, followed by pushups, jumping split lunges, a front plank and then mountain climbers and you will be surprised how fast 20 minutes will fly by.
Another strategy, if you are hoping to go straight from work to a Christmas party, is to pick a lunch time workout that is not going to get you all sweaty. Choose a bar workout or a yoga class where you will get the strength you need but will then be able to return to work without having to touch up your hair or makeup. You may not be getting the calorie blast you were hoping for, but it is better than nothing.
If you absolutely must get your sweat on, but still need to look presentable back at work or at an evening function, you still can. One of my favourite things about Eva is that she always looks fabulous, even when she is working out, so I asked her to share with me a few of her tricks in hopes we will no longer skip a workout because we won’t have time after to wash our hair, or reapply our makeup. Eva says she will do her eyes in the morning with a little bit of primer, some shadow, liner and mascara and then when she finishes her sweat session she will quickly cleanse and moisturize her skin before applying a quick application of foundation, bronzer and blush. Easy. To eliminate the post workout hair wash she recommends starting with clean hair, so either wash it the night before or when you wake up. She promises clean hair will never kink from a ponytail and with a quick blow dry of the sweaty roots you are left with voluminous, salon style hair.
We all know the dangers the holiday season can bring and we also know that you can’t exercise away a bad diet, but hopefully keeping a schedule and being consistent with your workouts will transfer into you making the right decisions when you are tempted by so many wrong ones.
Attached - Jennifer Garner leaving the gym yesterday after a workout.
