By: Chris Gates

When you’re a parent, it can be hard to find time to do anything, outside of taking care of your family and your career.

On a daily basis, you’re worried about…

• Getting the kids to school.
• Getting to work on time.
• Managing chores around the house.
• Being the best you can be at work.
• Getting home from work on time to pick up the kids.
• Cooking dinner.
• Getting everybody to bed on time.

The list goes on and on… Rinse and repeat, day after day.

Being a parent is a full-time job on its own, in addition to your other full-time job (you know, work).

With all of that going on, most folks are left to wonder about how to find time to exercise as a busy parent.

Well, I’ve got your back!

I’m a busy parent, too. I have three kids, two full-time jobs, and a slew of roles and responsibilities to fulfill on a daily basis.

Many of my 1-on-1 online fitness coaching clients are busy parents, too. And we navigate life together to find ways to mix exercise into their daily routines.

That’s exactly what I’ll teach you about in this article.

Let’s break down how to find time to exercise as a busy parent, while discussing concepts you should be aware of in order to manage your health and fitness effectively.

Many of my current and past clients are parents, and we’ve managed to see amazing progress! Check out their stories on my client testimonials page.

Let’s Be Honest: This Isn’t Easy

If being a parent and regularly showing up to the gym was easy, everybody would do it.

But most people don’t, which is a sign of how truly difficult striking the right balance is.

And when you go searching on the internet for how to overcome the challenges of parenting and exercise, you’re often greeted with totally unrealistic and impractical solutions:

• “Workout at your desk!”
• “Involve your family and train with your kids!”
• “Find a few 5-10 minute pockets of time throughout the day!”

None of those are bad suggestions, but the average person just won’t (or can’t) do those things — myself included.

Like, I’m not going to get sweaty at my desk, in the middle of an office space.

I can’t lift weights with my kids. That would be chaos.

And while movement on a few occasions throughout the day is absolutely beneficial from a health and fitness perspective, I really prefer to have a substantial training session where I can really challenge myself.

So rather than offer up cute suggestions, let’s break down some real ways you can train hard and still maintain balance in your daily lifestyle.

You Need Less Exercise Than You Think

You’re probably accustomed to working out for either…

• Most days of the week, every week.
• A long time per workout, like an hour or more.

And for a traditional workout split, I think that’s spot on. Getting an hour workout completed 4-5 times a week for an hour or so allows you to have really good workouts, and make tons of progress,

But the situation you’re in right now isn’t traditional.

As a busy parent, you have level-set your expectations and understand that working out less, or for shorter durations, is more or less required.

And the cool thing is, you really don’t need a lot of training to maintain the progress you’ve made to this point.

Research shows that you can maintain almost all of your muscle with very low training volumes — as low as 6 sets per muscle group, or 30 percent of your current training volume.

So if you can just do that minimum required level of work in the gym, you can essentially guarantee you’re not going to lose what you’ve worked so hard for.

In this phase of your life — where life can be crazy, stressful, hard, you name it — having maintenance as your primary goal is often the right way to approach things.

Interested in getting help with your fitness goals in 2024? Get on my early-access coaching list so that you can grab a spot before they fill up!

What Happens if You DO Lose Progress?

A common fear is that you won’t be able to exercise at all for a long period of time, and therefore you’ll lose all of your progress.

And I totally get that.

It’s not an unrealistic fear, either. If you find yourself unable to train for 2-3 weeks, or longer, you may start to see a decline in muscle mass. But that decline will be small, and it will take far longer to see noticeable muscle loss.

Nevertheless, I have a piece of information to share with you that will hopefully calm your nerves.

Let me tell you about “muscle memory.”

• As you train hard, make progress, and see your body transform, your body build muscle cells.
• When you’re forced to take time off, those muscle cells may shrink in size. But they don’t go away.
• So when you’re able to train consistently again, you can rebuild muscle exponentially faster than it took to build that muscle the first time around.

Building muscle is truly an investment, in so many respects. It takes a lot of time and effort, and the results don’t come overnight.

But consistency and effort over time lead to a lot of progress. And you’ll benefit from that progress forever by way of better health, strength, and yes… Ability to rebuild muscle.

I have conversations about this all the time with clients when they have to take a week or more off from training. They’re always worried, and I always explain the concept of muscle memory and encourage them to not freak out.

Muscle memory will benefit you, as a busy parent, too.

Give Yourself Options With Your Workouts

Figuring out how to find time to exercise as a busy parent isn’t the only hurdle you have to overcome.

You’ll also need to develop an understanding of whether or not you actually SHOULD work out, based on your lifestyle and how your body is feeling.

Let me explain…

• Let’s say you have a few really bad nights of sleep.
• Or, your days have been draining some sun up to sun down.
• Perhaps stress is unbelievably high.
• Or maybe everybody in your family is sick.

Those are all common factors that pop up for parents, and they all might be reasons for you to NOT exercise — even if you have the time to do it.

Sometimes, you need to scale things up or down based on how your life and your body are operating. And occasionally, choosing to forego a workout might be the right call.

You also might run into situations where you can get a workout in, but you need to change things up based on time, or based on how you’re feeling.

Some exercises are inherently more fatiguing than others. For example…

• Barbell exercises are more fatiguing than using machines.
• Compound exercises require more from a recovery standpoint than isolation exercises.
• High-intensity exercise is far more demanding on your body than moderate- or low-intensity.

You should always try to be mindful of how you’re feeling, and read and react accordingly.

Don’t force yourself to do barbell squats when you are feeling sluggish. Leg extensions are a perfectly suitable alternative (and much less demanding).

You don’t have to do hill sprints if you’re exhausted to begin with. Going for a walk is still really beneficial.

Sleep Plays A Huge Role (Obviously)

Perhaps the biggest limiting factor for your ability to exercise as a busy parent is sleep.

And yes, I know this article is centered around finding TIME to exercise, but the amount of sleep you get will impact your:

• Energy levels.
• Brain function.
• Recovery.
• Mood.
• Hormones.

It matters. A lot.

And for parents — especially those with younger children — sleep is often at a premium.

For most adults, it’s recommended you get somewhere in the range of 7-9 hours of sleep a night. I have an article outlining why being in that window of time is so important for muscle recovery and growth if you’d like to check it out.

But sometimes that much sleep isn’t possible. When your kids are young, it’s a rarity to get 7-9 hours of sleep.

So what should you do?

Well, this is purely anecdotal, but I’ve found that when sleep is chronically low — we’re talking 5 hours or less for multiple days in a row — is when training performance and recovery really take a big hit.

If you find yourself in that situation, opting for low-intensity exercise (or no exercise at all) is probably your best option until you can get adequate sleep.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Choose Exercises You Enjoy

OK, now let’s get into the specific time-saving techniques!

For starters, you need to primarily choose forms of exercise that you actually enjoy.

Because a lot of the time, you’re going to feel drained from a mental and/or emotional standpoint. If you dread going to the gym because you hate your workout, you’re not going to make time for it.

But on the flip side, if you DO enjoy the exercise plan you have, you’ll be more likely to still find time to do it.

You can do this in any number of ways…

• If you enjoy dumbbell exercises more than barbell exercises, use dumbbells.
• If you love the machines at your gym, that’s great! Use machines.
• If you hate running, but you love spin class, then plan to go to spin class.

Whatever gets you fired up to work out — or at the very least, feels tolerable — that’s what you should do.

Enjoyment is key.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Do Bilateral Exercises

There are two types of exercises you can choose from with strength training:

1. Unilateral exercises.
2. Bilateral exercises.

Bilateral exercises involve you training one side at a time, on its own.

For instance…

• Doing dumbbell curls with your right arm on its own before using your left arm.
• Performing split squats with your left leg forward, before switching to your right.
• Doing one-arm dumbbell rows on one side, followed by the other.

Training this way is great! It can help you really isolate a muscle, and correct muscle and strength imbalances.

BUT… It also takes twice the time to complete each set.

Instead, do unilateral exercises — exercises where both sides of your body are being trained at the same time.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Use Supersets

Another great time-saving technique is to use supersets.

Supersets are when you perform multiple exercises (typically two, but sometimes more) back to back before taking a rest period. I have a full article on how to use supersets if you’d like to learn more.

But for the purposes of how to find time to exercise as a busy parent, the appeal here is pretty simple.

Why do each exercise on its own, when you can do several at the same time?

Supersets are often done best by pairing opposing muscle groups. For instance…

• A cable biceps curl, immediately followed by a triceps push down.
• Dumbbell chest press, immediately followed by dumbbell rows.
• Leg extensions, immediately followed by leg curls.

One muscle group rests while the other trains, and then you switch. Once both exercises have been completed, that’s the end of your set.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Use 1 Piece of Equipment

Supersets are often done best when using the same piece of equipment, which pairs well with this next tip.

It seems so logical, but it’s easy to mess this up.

Don’t plan to use a different piece of equipment for every exercise in your workout. That’s a recipe for disaster, from a time perspective.

If you do that, you’ll not only need to time to set up and tear down each piece of equipment, but you’ll also have to hope and pray each piece is available exactly when you need it.

You and I both know that never happens, so you’ll likely be standing around, waiting, watching the clock, and stressing about not getting your workout completed.

Instead, do a bunch of dumbbell exercises all together. Or plan to hit a few exercises on the cable machine in a row, before moving to a different piece of equipment.

Structuring things this way can be a MAJOR time saver, and it’s easy to do.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Reduce The Amount of Exercises

Even if you have all the time in the world to exercise, you shouldn’t need more than 5 or 6 exercises per workout to make incredible progress.

That is, if your workout program is structured appropriately.

So obviously if you’re strapped for time, limiting the amount of exercises you do in each workout is going to help tremendously.

A good rule of thumb is to start each workout with compound exercises, and as the workout unfolds you’ll gravitate to isolation-style exercises.

It could look something like this…

1. Dumbbell bench press
2. Bent over dumbbell row
3. Cable biceps curls (superset)
4. Triceps push down (superset)
5. Dumbbell lateral raise

That’s a really comprehensive upper body workout. You’ll hit every major muscle group, and as long as you’re legitimately pushing yourself, you’ll make a ton of progress, too.

Lots of people go into the gym with plans to do 10-15 exercises, but here’s the thing…

• It’s unnecessary.
• It’s inefficient.
• If they’re doing that many exercises, they’re not trying hard enough.

Do less, and really push yourself.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Consider Total Body Workouts

Something that I’ve gravitated to with my workouts as a busy parent is a total body approach.

I used to LOVE the push-pull-legs style of training, where you pick 2-3 muscle groups for each workout and really hammer away at them.

And don’t get me wrong. I still enjoy that.

But as I’ve gotten busier, I’ve found it to be a flawed approach. Because if something comes up, and I miss a workout, then I have several muscle groups that get neglected for an entire week.

Not with a total body approach!

By having every one of my workouts be a total body workout, I’m guaranteeing that every muscle group gets enough attention each week.

If I miss a workout, it’s not as big of a deal.

I’d recommend the same approach for you, because you truly never do know what’s going to come up.

There will be days where you have a plan, and wake up to a sick kiddo. And your entire plan will get thrown off.

The total body approach is the most forgiving approach.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Use MYOREPS

MYOREPS are somewhat of an advanced technique that’s lesser-known, but potentially very valuable for folks that are short on time.

MYOREPS involve you lifting to a very high intensity — taking a set almost all the way to complete failure — and then taking very short rest periods to pack in volume at a high intensity.

Here’s how it works…

1. For a given exercise, take the first set all the way up to around 1 rep from failure.
2. After that, put the weight down and take a short rest period (5-10 seconds).
3. Then pick the weight back up and crank out as many quality reps as you can.
4. Drop the weight again for another short rest period.
5. Continue this process for as many sets as you’re supposed to do.

So let’s say you plan on doing three sets of cable biceps curls in your workout. What you can do is perform one full set, followed by two mini MYOREP sets.

The thought process with this technique is that, since your rest periods are shorter, you’re doing just as many reps at a high intensity as you would with longer rest periods.

You’re just cutting out all of the filler reps you have to do to get there.

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Keep Your Cardio Short

At the beginning of this article, I mentioned that the 5-10 minute workout concept was “cute,” but not practical.

And I mean that… For strength training.

But for cardio, short bursts absolutely CAN be impactful.

Whether it’s going a few quick sprints on the spin bike, jogging up and down the hill outside your house 4-5 times, or going for a 10-minute walk, that little stuff adds up.

It takes much less time to improve your cardiovascular endurance and health than it does to, say build muscle. So when you find little pockets of time you can utilize, do it!

How to Find Time to Exercise As A Busy Parent: Lifestyle Hacks

Lastly (but definitely not least), there are always things you can do in your daily life to help you learn how to find time to exercise as a busy parent.

Think about it… There are tons of things you do on a daily or weekly basis that can potentially be shortened or automated.

• Instead of spending hours doing the yardwork, hire a landscaper.
• Rather than spend an hour-plus grocery shopping, do grocery pickup.
• Set up a carpool with your neighbors so you don’t have to drive the kids to school every day.

Whatever you can do to carve out little pockets of time throughout the week can really add up. And it can potentially give you the time you need to exercise.

I Hope This Helps!

There’s a lot here that can potentially help you find time to exercise as a busy parent.

I hope at least one, or some combination of a few of these strategies works for you!

As you can tell, there’s not a “hack” or magic fix to make everything work. It just comes down to you prioritizing your own health and fitness goals, and then structuring things in a way that maximizes your time.

If you’re motivated to do just that, and need a little bit of help along the way, check out my coaching page. I work with parents all over the world to build muscle, burn fat, and make progress with fitness that sticks.

And I’d love to help you along your journey.

Thanks so much for reading!

~ Chris