- With the demands of work and family,
finding the time to jump in the pool,
ride your bike,
or head out for a run
can be tricky.
- Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, Mark.
I'm struggling with that myself at the moment,
trying to balance training for Kona.
So we've put together a few tips
that can help you
if you've got very limited time to train.
- Try getting your training in
before the day really kicks off.
After a hectic day,
you can lack an energy
to really get the most out of yourself
in the evening.
So starting early means you can get
good quality training in before life,
work or family gets in the way.
But this does mean you'll have to get used
to training in the early hours.
In fact, Heather, you've already
run and cycled this morning before getting here.
So what did you do to help?
- Here in the UK,
we're going in to the winter now,
so it's getting a bit darker in the mornings,
harder to get up for sure.
But also it does make training
a little bit more difficult,
you just need to make sure
you're prepared and you've got lights
either for your bike or for running.
And at the end of the day,
when you have got up
and you've done that session,
it can be so much more rewarding
and also you might get to catch
a nice sunrise.
- If you're limited for time,
then the key is to use the unusable time,
and commuting is a killer for wasting time.
So if it's possible,
combine your training with your commute.
- Yeah, that's a great idea.
It does depend how far from work you live,
but you can either cycle in, run in,
or even on the way home.
And, well this morning I chose to cycle
'cause I realised it's gonna take
just as long in the car,
and the bonus, I saved some money.
- Yeah, and a good and simple bike session
for your commute
is to sprint for around
10-30 seconds every five minutes.
Now if you have a relatively busy routine,
or there's a lot of junctions,
you can use these junctions or lights
to sprint from.
And this is a really good and fun way
of improving your top-end power.
- Having a training plan
can make such a difference with motivation.
If I just get up in the morning
and plan to do some sort of training,
it's very tempting just to press the snooze
and forget that session.
So as much as you do need to listen
to your body,
having a structure can make such a difference.
- Yeah, and actually having a plan
can allow you to be more specific
with your training,
to really maximise that time available.
So to use that precious time wisely,
you can use it on quality training,
rather than aimlessly heading out
and increasing your mileage.
Actually a lot of top age-groupers,
even professional athletes,
have proven this quality over quantity training
to be very successful.
With a busy life schedule
and limited time
you'll have to be pretty organised
to juggle three sports alongside.
Actually one thing I've found to really help
is to log everything in a calendar,
everything I'm doing day-to-day,
or even a diary.
Then you can combine that with your training plan
to line things up perfectly.
That will even help when you're
packing your kit for the day's training.
- As well as packing your kit,
it's a good idea to plan your nutrition.
For example, if I'm training early in the morning,
I'll make a smoothie the night before,
so then I can take that habit
straight off to my training session
and go straight to work and saving time.
Also if you're training at lunchtime
or later in the day,
it's a good idea to have some food
so that you're fueled and ready
to train straightaway.
- Most of us love being outdoors
and the idea of putting the miles in
with a bit of scenery
can be really motivating.
But riding indoors
or training indoors
can also be really beneficial.
Firstly, riding indoors you've got less set-up time
and fewer stops from when you're riding outside.
So instantly,
you're saving yourself some time.
It's also more intense,
there are less opportunities to free-wheel
and you don't carry your momentum so much,
so generally your heart rate will be higher
on an indoor trainer.
And of course, you can just
crack on with structured sessions
without having to worry about
roads or junctions
or even the time of day.
So you can certainly get more
out of your rides or runs.
And now with the instructioner Zwift,
you can ride along with others
for a bit more motivation
rather than locking yourself away on your own.
- There's some tips and ideas
for fitting your training in
when you're tight for time.
Also just remember that recovery
is equally important
so you need to try and squeeze that in
somewhere as well.
If you've got any suggestions or ideas,
we'd love to know what they are,
so just leave them in the comment section below,
and give us the "thumbs up",
and remember that you can subscribe
to GTN by clicking on the globe.
- And you can head over
to the GTN shop by clicking here,
and to see a really short run session
using lamp posts,
just click down here.
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click down here.