How to: fit exercise around a busy schedule

Hello lovelies! Recently, having tweeted about a new exercise regime (Alex is teaching me how to swim properly, and how to play badminton) I've been inundated with questions like 'how do you fit it in?' 'does Alex work part time or something?' 'how do you pay for it all?'. I've also had lots of you saying things like 'oh I wouldn't be able to do that' so I decided to write a few blog posts on how we do it. Hopefully it will give some of you some tips and make you realise that there is always time for these things :)

First up, the Filofax!

I won this in a giveaway absolutely ages ago and haven't stopped using it since! As you can see from the above picture, it contains information on when we need to do the food shopping, what blog posts I want to write that week, where we're staying, weekend plans, and exercise plans and times!

To give you a little idea, myself and Alex both work full time (currently for the same Company but I've recently found out I've got a new job so I'll be leaving soon!). Alex is actually based in the North East most days and leaves home at 7am and gets back at about 6pm after doing a 2-hour journey each way. Alex owns his own house and I rent my flat so we split our time between the two and at the moment we're actually in the process of me moving into his house as well as getting ready for me to start my new job, keeping up appearances with our families (mine live near Cambridge), spending time with friends and exercising! In between all of that we need to eat, sleep, wash, and actually sit down sometimes so things are getting very busy. My Filofax is invaluable with all of this because it keeps everything in one place!

When it comes to actually finding the time to exercise, we simply did a bit of research into our local leisure centres. After looking at a few timetables we found that Uttoxeter leisure centre had the best swim times to fit in with our other 'stuff'. Currently, we swim on a Wednesday evening after work, a Friday evening (after doing an hour of badminton) and a Sunday morning. It does require a bit of organisation and forward planning... I'll speak about that next!

When we first started swimming and badminton we were constantly rushing around packing bags, unpacking bags, getting changed and saying things like 'oh I'll just have to wear this'. Very quickly this got annoying and tiresome so we decided to make a trip to Sports Direct after work one night to get organised. We bought kit bags, goggles, and badminton trainers and made sure we got the kit bags organised when we got home. They contain the following:
♥ Swimming costume or trunks
♥ Towel
♥ Goggles
♥ Spare underwear
♥ A plastic/waterproof bag (to put our swimming gear in when it's wet!
♥ Running leggings, a sports bra and socks, top and hoodie (for me) and badminton shorts and a polo shirt (for Alex)
♥ Badminton trainers (you change your shoes before you go on the court)
♥ Water bottles
♥ Wash bags with shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, moisturisor etc
♥ Mine also has spare change (for lockers) lip balm and a hairbrush and hair bobbles in it :)

We've since found things so much easier, when Alex gets home from work I'm changed and ready to go, we pick up our kit bags, put them in the car and off we go! We also pre-book our badminton courts a week in advance and plan our meals around the exercise. For example I normally cook something like a bolognaise on a Tuesday night so it can just be reheated before we leave for swimming on a Wednesday night. It sounds very complicated but once you've found a routine that works (it takes a little bit of trial and error) you'll find that you do things without thinking about it. For example last night I dried our costumes and towels and packed them back into our kit bags whilst dinner was cooking. Multi-tasking can be very efficient! ;)

Hopefully this was helpful, I'm also going to write about the best places to buy sports gear, the gear that we own and use, how to eat healthily on a budget (and with not a lot of time to cook!) and how we 'afford' to pay for all of the exercise we do (and what we gave up to be able to afford it). Is there anything else you'd like to know or like me to write about? Just pop it in the comments below and I'll get it done!

xo