Training through a busy schedule: My advice!

We’re all on that grind. Wanting to hustle at work or at school and in the gym which is never easy to balance. For a lot of us we’re working through a busy schedule from home or maybe you’re back at work and struggling to get back in the groove. Whatever it may be, we all feel stress from time to time and this can really hold us back from achieving our health and fitness goals. 

Here are my top tips for balancing work/ uni and staying fit and healthy too: 

Planning out your week 

The best thing you can do is schedule out your week. Planning what days you’re working/ studying and most importantly, scheduling in your gym sessions throughout the week. This will set your sessions in stone and you can plan everything else around them for example your social events and catch ups, because getting your gym sessions in for the week is essential! 

Getting your workout in early 

The earlier you get your workout in, the better. This way, you’ve set yourself up for a good day, you’re not having to dwell on your workout all day and you can enjoy those post-workout endorphins all day. Hell yeah! 

When we work out in the morning, we’ve already done something for ourselves and we tend to feel more in control of the rest of the day. It doesn't have to be a killer session if you’ve got a busy work day, maybe a bit of cardio, some yoga or stretching or even a walk to get those steps in and the body moving.

Efficient + timed workouts

This is something I’ve implemented recently. Working out should be YOU time, meaning NO social media (even in rest periods - fml I know), you’re there for you girl. Also, start timing your rest periods. I have a rest timer in the TWS App or you can use your watch/ phone - doing this has made my workouts much more time effective, as well as challenging (rest periods are set specifically for a reason depending on your goal).

Meal Prep, meal prep, meal prep 

As much as it can be a hassle, meal prep will save you. You can kill it at the gym all you like, but what you do with the other 23 hours of the day is really what will make the difference. Pick a couple of easy to bulk-make meals and get it done. Pop in your headphones, blast some tunes, listen to a podcast or watch your fav YouTuber (I hear Sophie Allen is a barrel of lols) and smash it out. Having easy to grab meals which are healthy, nutritious and you know exactly what’s in it,will stop you from going off your calories for the day.

Or you can just prepare your staples so they’re easy to grab and chuck together like cooking up your protein, steaming rice, cutting up carrot sticks and roasting potatoes. Some of my favourite easy to meal prep meals from the TWS App are the Easy Stir Fry and Overnight Oats. 

Sleep and de-stress 

Sleep is essential in our recovery in the gym as well as helping us on our fat loss journey. The aim is to get anywhere between 7-9 hours of quality sleep. To make sure we’re achieving good sleep, we need to be de-stressing before bedtime and creating a healthy night-time routine. For example reading before bed, avoiding using our phone, wearing blue light glasses and making sure we’re not drinking coffee 7 hours before bedtime.

Be kind to yourself 

Working long hours while also working towards your health and fitness goals at the same time is never easy. Be kind to yourself and don’t work yourself to the bone. 

Give yourself rest days when you need them and fuel your body with good food. I can’t stress enough the importance of taking a lunchtime walk to destress, defuzz your brain as well as getting your steps in and a bit of vitamin-D. 

If you just run yourself to the ground working super hard and trying to hit every gym session, you won’t be able to recover and you’ll end up feeling more stressed, which won’t help you, whatsoever. 

Here’s some apps I love to help with productivity and work

• Asana- this is the program I use to organise, track and manage my workload and delegate tasks to my team. This is where we plan everything from content that needs to be created and when. This app is perfect as we all work remotely, this is the easiest way for me to keep on top of everything that’s going on. I honestly couldn’t do it without this program...

• Reminders + Notes- I use the reminders and notes in my iPhone and Macbook to jot down notes from meetings, and to remind myself when I have important events and when posts and certain tasks need to be completed by. 

• Google Calendar- I use google calendar to schedule in everything! I schedule in my gym sessions, I use it to send out meeting reminders to my team and any other personal and social events I have on. Calendar is great because you can invite people to an event and you can link your work schedule or uni timetable to google calendar so everything is in one spot!

• Google Doc/Drive- if you’re working with a team Google docs is the perfect place for everyone to work collectively and see how projects are progressing. Even if you are working solo, Google Drive is perfect because if you have a laptop malfunction (like myself and my damn coffee) everything important and work related will be saved in Google drive, saving you a whole lotta stress. 

• Freedom- Are you one of those people that get stuck scrolling through Instagram or Facebook, being completely distracted from the work you need to do. Then, at the end of the week you get that dreaded screentime overview and you see how much time you actually could have spent doing productive work. Freedom is an app that blocks all those time distracting apps, for a set time, helping you stay on task.