Don’t have time to exercise? 4 ways to strengthen your heart

The number one barrier between Americans and exercise is time — although I’m sure you’re not surprised. Hour-long workouts and ultra-scheduled routines don’t make sense for every individual.

Finding time to exercise gets even more frustrating when you’re bombarded by ads or served content from ‘fitfluencers.’ Dream body programs and high-intensity bootcamps seem like a nice-to-have luxury for people with flexible schedules.

The truth is that exercise doesn’t have to be complex. And more often than not, you don’t even need a gym.

Here’s how to exercise and strengthen your heart when you’re hard-pressed for time.

First, let’s quash a few exercise myths

Office work and sedentary jobs have changed the way we view ‘exercise.’ Most of us have jobs that are less than 100 years old, and now that we’re living busier lives, it’s no wonder three in four of us can’t meet minimum activity guidelines.

The inherent busyness of our lives makes dedicated exercise feel even more daunting. Coupled with breakneck schedules and unhelpful internet advice, it’s easy to feel trapped in analysis paralysis.

So before we jump into the nuts and bolts, we first should address the underlying myths around exercise:

There’s no ‘special equipment’ required for exercising. You don’t have to buy weights that gather dust in your basement or purchase expensive supplements to build muscle.
You don’t necessarily need an hour of heavy exercise per day to improve your metabolic health. Just 20 minutes of moderate activity per day can cut your risk of cardiovascular disease by nearly 10%.
Exercise isn’t something you have to do in a single time block. Small bouts of exercise throughout the day may be similarly effective at improving metabolic health.
Exercise isn’t always directly proportional to metabolic health. By that, I mean that you can never out-exercise an unhealthy diet. You do need physical activity for your metabolic health, but you won’t reap all its benefits without whole, real food.

With this in mind, let’s look at your options.

4 ways to strengthen your heart with a busy schedule

I understand the stress of a jam-packed schedule. That’s why I only included exercises here that:

Work for any skill level
Can be adapted to any length
Can be completed regardless of space or seasons

Let’s start with one of the most popular options:

1. Walking

Just fifteen minutes of walking per day can improve blood sugar, blood pressure, and blood cholesterol levels. It can also reduce postprandial glucose levels, which are essentially blood sugar spikes after you eat.

The nice thing about walking is that it can be done literally anywhere, whether it’s at the grocery store, your office building, or around the house. You can also combine walking with other forms of exercise — like stretching, squats, and lunges — to maximize muscle contractions.

Walking uphill is never a bad idea, since you can activate your peroneal muscles and increase oxygen demands (the latter of which is associated with longer lifespans). Depending on your time restrictions, you could also opt for quick hikes, which may help with low-grade inflammation and glucose tolerance.

2. Couch exercises

If you’re physically exhausted by the end of the day, some simple couch exercises could be a decent option. These allow you to ‘rest’ on the couch — whether you’re watching TV or reading a book — while engaging key muscles and strengthening your core.

I want you to get the most bang for your buck here, which means engaging bigger muscles with slow, repeated movements. Considering there’s around 15 minutes of commercials in every 45-minute show, you can get 30 minutes of exercise with every two hours of TV.

Here are a few exercises to get you started:

Stand-sit. As the name implies, you can stand up and sit down multiple times during an ad break.
Triceps dip. Raise and lower yourself while hanging off the front of the couch to engage your arm muscles.
Leg scissors. Cross your legs over and under one another (sideways) at least 10 times.
Core flex. Hold a pillow and swing your core from side to side.

If you’ve never exercised before and don’t know how to get started, you’re welcome to read my guide on exercising for metabolic health.

3. Bodyweight exercises

Bodyweight exercises (also referred to as calisthenics or isometrics) only require your body weight to perform. Pushups and situps are some of the most common examples, but there are a few other options depending on your fitness level.

Dead-hanging, for example, is a phenomenal exercise for improving grip strength. If you live in a neighborhood with a playground or park, you could try hanging from the monkeybars for 10 to 60 seconds.

Planks are another option for increasing core stability. They not only improve your strength and endurance, but can potentially increase your cardiometabolic fitness as well. This study shows dramatic improvements with just 10 minutes of planking per day (five days per week over the course of four weeks).

If you’re older, overweight, or have suffered a significant injury, the last thing you need is to put extra stress on your joints. Go low and slow as you get used to calisthenics and don’t push yourself beyond your current capacity.

4. Exercising during breaks

If you’re scheduled for breaks every two hours, or if you have lots of back-to-back meetings, you might plan to add consistent movement lasting one to five minutes each.

For example, you could do squats and calf raises after logging out of a meeting. Research shows one minute of these exercises can result in better executive function, concentration, and less mental fatigue.

Another option is to wall sit, which lowers both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. This is a low-impact exercise that fits almost any time frame and is especially good if you’re recovering from an impact injury.

If you don’t have much time, try running up the stairs. It should only take a minute to climb a flight, and less than 30 seconds to come back down. The benefits, frankly, speak for themselves: climbing stairs over the course of four to eight weeks can improve insulin sensitivity, boost aerobic capacity, and even reverse cardiometabolic risk factors (particularly heart disease).

Combining exercise with the other principles of metabolic health

Restoring your metabolic health doesn’t have to cost thousands — there’s no need for pricey gym memberships, two-hour workouts, or specialty equipment. Even if you work 60+ hour weeks, I promise you have time for a few minutes of purposeful movement.

Of course, the further you get in your metabolic health journey, the stronger, healthier, and more active you’ll become. And when you’re ready to carve out more time for exercise, one of these resources might be helpful:

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