We are SUPER moms and, therefore, SUPER busy. We are getting kids ready for school, driving to activities, juggling laundry and doctors’ appointments. There are not enough hours in the day, and usually, our last priority is our health and fitness.
We have limited time to work out, but you don’t need a full hour of intense exercise to stay fit. The data proves that 20-minute workouts have multiple benefits. It lowers your risk of heart disease, improves memory, burns extra calories, and helps boost endorphins.
If you replace 20 minutes of social media scrolling (or even do it while you’re working out) with 20 minutes of exercise three times weekly, that turns into one hour a week, four hours a month, and over 200 hours of working out a year!
Here are some 20-minute workouts that easily fit in during a busy week.
1. Virtual Free Workouts
Get out your yoga mat and open YouTube on your Firestick. The app is full of free videos of short workouts that you can bust out in your living room. I recommend “Kayla Itsines,” She provides exercises that are easy to follow and can be completed in a small space at various times, including just five minutes. My best friend and I set a time between meeting-from-home days to get that workout done over the phone every week. We start the same YouTube workout video and chat while working out “together.” Having a workout partner increases your chance of completing the workout because you’re accountable to another person, so get a friend involved!
2. Yoga with the Kids from Home
Have a little one that jumps on you while trying to get crunches in? Me, too! Kids’ yoga on the TV is a great way to work out side-by-side with your mini-me. I discovered Cosmic Kids Yoga, a free YouTube yoga channel that combines yoga with popular kid themes like jungle animals, Disney movies, and even Minecraft to get your older ones involved. While my kids did the junior version of classic yoga poses, I completed 20-minute adult yoga sessions.
3. Take the Stairs
Incorporate a workout into your daily chores. My laundry room is in my basement, so bringing it up to the second floor is 14 steps for my thighs and lower body each time I go up with a weight (aka laundry basket full of clothes). If you divide your laundry purposely to increase the number of times you’re going up the stairs, you can get a lot of stairs and feel the burn while also getting your least favorite chore done! To add some extra exercise to this, do a squat every time you fold a shirt, and you will feel great post-exercise soreness the next day.
4. Go for a Walk
Now that the weather is nice, walking is the easiest and most enjoyable way to get a small workout with seriously beneficial effects. Walking for just twenty minutes has so many positive health outcomes. It lowers your risk for heart disease by up to 30 percent, produces endorphins to help your mood, and burns some extra calories in time for summer. Some studies show that it helps keep parts of the brain that help with memory growth.
At the very least, getting out for 20 minutes in the sunshine will help increase your Vitamin D levels and give you a few minutes of the self-care we all desperately need as moms. Go for a walk on your lunch break or get to school pick-up a little early, and do it then. Even five minutes is better than no walk, so go for it.
5. Get in the Pool with Your Kids
Summertime is right around the corner. I barely get in the water at our local community pool all summer, even though we are there 3-4 times a week. I don’t want anyone to see my cellulite, varicose veins, or semi-shaved legs. Here’s the secret: no one cares. Every other mom is busy with their children, every other mom thinks they look terrible in a bathing suit, and every other mom has not shaved in three days, too.
Once you get under the water, no one can see anything! The natural resistance of the water helps tone legs and thighs even if you walk back and forth in the shallow end. Lifting and throwing your kids up in the air is a great arm-toning exercise. I am not a beach person, but walking on the sand at the beach also provides natural resistance and increases leg and thigh muscles. So stop guarding the beach bags and get in!
6. Beer for Dad, Workout for Mom
My husband has embraced and loves “Dad Bod Life” and enjoys breweries. I want to work out on the weekends and do not enjoy beer. Let’s all get what we want and mix a brewery for Dad and a workout for Mom in the same afternoon. Westchester County has a lot of breweries, and they can be a great place to spend a few hours with your kids since many of them cater to families by providing board games, corn hole, and kid-friendly small plates.
Breweries usually pop up in industrial-type areas like big warehouses, and guess what also pops up in these areas: gyms! Pick a brewery, do a quick Google search on a gym nearby, and check out if there is a trial membership for free or a one-time use fee that you can usually get for less than the price of two beers. Captain Lawrence Brewery in Elmsford is .2 miles from The Westchester Gym, which advertises a weekly membership for just $14.00. Drop off Dad and the kids and go for a quick workout, and maybe this will even turn into your Saturday afternoon routine for the summer!
The key takeaway here is you CAN do it! Don’t feel guilty about leaving your family for a short while to go work out. Please don’t feel like you always have to spend that 20 minutes getting a household chore done or get some squats in while you do it. Take the time to do something with so many good side effects and embrace it, knowing you’ll return to your family and home a happier mom. This means way more to them than a clean kitchen, I promise.
