How To Exercise If You’re a Busy Executive

By: Igor Klibanov

You’ve managed to build up a formidable company, bring in record revenues, and you’re a shining star. But with all that focus on your business, you’ve lost focus on your health. You want to start or return to exercise, but your time is limited, and it’s confined to the early hours of the morning. What do you do?

First and foremost, you want to structure your workout either in a superset format or a circuit format. In a superset format, you simply perform alternating sets of 2 exercises until all the sets are complete. In a circuit format, you perform a number of exercises back to back, and then repeat the whole series 1 or more times. These methods of training allow you to perform a tremendous amount of work in a very short period of time.

Because you are short on time, there is very little time to waste on exercises that don’t have a strong return on investment, so select exercises that work multiple muscle groups at the same time. Good choices would be pushups, lat pulldowns, squats, overhead presses, and rowing variations.

Additionally, your time to exercise is often confined to the morning. Because the spine is less flexible in the morning hours, avoid exercises that heavily load the spine, like heavy squats (but moderate and light unloaded squats are fine), deadlifts, overhead presses (again, light overhead presses are fine), etc. The chances for a spinal injury are significantly higher at these times in the day.

But with all that, let’s not forget that exercise is just one part of the puzzle. In addition to exercise, you should pay strong attention to nutrition and lifestyle, particularly stress management.

About the Author

Igor Klibanov was selected as one of the top 5 personal trainers in Toronto by the Metro News newspaper and finds great satisfaction in helping clients reach their goals. He has his Bachelor’s Degree in Kinesiology and Health Science, and numerous personal training and kinesiology certifications. He works privately with clients out of a gym in Markham, Ontario. If you would like to learn more about how Igor can help you, please visit www.torontofitnessonline.com