Takeaway Points:

Fitness for busy individuals is actually a lot simpler than it needs to be.
You can get great results with minimal time spent in the gym, so long as you’re following the right routine.
If you focus on the stuff that matters and remain consistent, you’ll see results even with training as infrequently as 1-2x/week.

When I was a teenager getting into lifting weights, I mostly did it because it was fun. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I was having fun doing it.

I spent a few years like this. I went to college and started following silly bodybuilding routines I saw online. I got really into it, and would spend upwards of 2+hrs/day in the gym, 6-7 days per week. I never really saw serious results because my training was completely unfocused, and I was just doing random stuff - I didn’t even log what I was doing.

Then I graduated. I got my personal training certification, and really learned how to put together a program. I got into powerlifting as a serious sport to train for. I still had all the time in the world, and still spent an incredible amount of time training, but at least now I was (sort of) getting results, because my training was a lot more focused.

I tried to keep this up, more or less, into adulthood. The issue, at the end of the day, wasn’t that I was less able to tolerate exercise, or that aging got in my way - it was just that I had so many other things to do. Kids, work, baking cookies for my wife when she’s feeling down, running out to the store to grab spices last minute for dinner - all kinds of unexpected adult responsibilities would pop up when I least expected them, and make it hard to stick to an exercise routine.

The mindset shift

I always thought of myself as the person who would never, ever give up on their fitness. And certainly, I haven’t. I still train consistently, and I train probably harder and more frequently than the average person. However, I also train a lot less than I used to, and in many ways, this feels like a failure.

Being an adult doesn’t necessarily mean your body falls apart suddenly. But it does mean that you have a lot more responsibilities, a lot more challenges, a lot more to juggle, and just the act of juggling all those things at once is exhausting on its own. Every person lets things start to fall through the cracks in one way or another. For me, it’s often cleaning the house as often as I should - for another person, it might be their fitness, or their relationships, or any one of a number of things that you have to juggle to have a balanced life.

I do, and have always, prioritized my fitness. But I began to make cuts.

In 2018-2020, I was intentionally pulling back a bit on my training volume, just to find a better balance. My training program was also somewhat upset by the fact that I’d made a lot of recent moves, and this really set me back a decent bit for quite a while. I was just starting to get back up to speed around March 2020, when the looming pandemic made me cut back to home workouts.

Then, I fell back into old habits. Working out from home offered me the ability to blur the line between fitness and work in new and terrifying ways. My workout room was my work office, and I could do sets of an exercise in between typing at the computer, resting while I worked. At the time, I allowed workouts to balloon to 3+ hrs/day, every day, and I defended this as something that I enjoyed at the time. And I did, for a while, but it eventually became too much, and I began to suffocate under the weight of all that training. I hit a serious wall, and struggled to continue.

In 2022, I intentionally decided to cut back to 3-4 days of training per week, fully expecting some loss of muscle and strength - instead, I found that I felt better, got better gains, and had a much better fitness/life balance.

Why this works

A favorite topic of mine in the past is the concept of minimalist fitness - that it doesn’t actually take very much effort to reap the vast majority of the results of any training routine. Most people think that they NEED to train 5+ workouts per week to see serious results, and laugh at the idea that you can get serious gains on much less.

But what the research has shown is consistently the opposite. The reality is that there are strongly diminishing returns to further training past a certain point, and there seems to be almost no floor below which continued adaptation is impossible. To put it short, you can get something like 80% of the benefits of exercise with just 2-3 well-structured workouts per week, and every additional workout past that point gives you a smaller and smaller additional benefit.

I knew this fundamentally, but I had the wrong mindset about it as well - most people think of this as meaning that, if they do any reduction in their training frequency, they’ll suddenly lose gains.

This isn’t really how it works. How it works instead is, you generally retain your current gains in strength and size, but simply see slightly slower results going forward in terms of additional progress. You may lose a little bit, but provided you keep training, you can keep progressing (if slowly) and see further results.

In my case, I was also pleasantly surprised - I generally found that I was gaining strength and muscle mass at comparable, or even better levels, compared to when I was training much more frequently. I knew, intellectually, that this is what should happen, but I didn’t really believe it, not until I had really tried it for myself.

What does a good routine look like?

A good routine, in this case, is pretty simple. You just need to train 2-3 times per week, hitting every major body part/movement in the process (some kind of core exercise, bench press, squat, deadlift, overhead press, and row or pulldown) - no confusing body part splits here, just repetitive full body workouts. Then, spend the rest of your time keeping your step count up, or just generally being active (I generally walk to the store on purpose every other day, plus additional walks or the use of a home treadmill/cycle).

I also use a flexible format in which I swap out exercises as needed. Bench press taken? That’s fine, I can use the chest press instead. I track all my exercises so I can continually progress even when only inconsistently using specific movements.

Because I care about strength, I do dedicate 1 training session

Using this exact process with 3x/week lifting, I’m stronger in my 30’s than I was in my 20’s. I’m in better shape, and I’m leaner. You could go even 1x/week or 2x/week and see great results if you have a properly progressed program. Fitness for busy individuals doesn’t have to be complicated - it can be incredibly simple. If you’re busy, you can probably still find at least a single day per week to workout - if not, you’ve probably got bigger problems you need to tackle first. Even when I worked 80+hr weeks, or worked 6+ days in a row, I generally still had down time, I just wasn’t managing my time effectively, and wasted time constantly.

The answer to how to balance fitness around a busy lifestyle is simple - make it simple, train a couple of times a week, and have the right guidance to keep you on track.

About Adam Fisher

Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.

During that time he has coached thousands of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.

Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.

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How To Balance Fitness Around A Busy Lifestyle