No Time to Work Out? Get Fit in a Flash

The idea of working out less and getting more out of it has undeniable appeal. After all, who wouldn't want to spend less time sweating and straining and more time doing more of whatever it is you like to do?

The good news, experts say, is that not only is this possible, but one key to faster fitness is turning the things you like to do into fitness activities. Walking the dog, playing catch with the kids, or working in your garden can help you reach your fitness goals.

"The goal here is to disguise your exercise," says Barry A. Franklin, PhD, national spokesman for the American Heart Association's Choose to Move program. "We have, as a nation, overemphasized the value of structured exercise and underemphasized the value of lifestyle physical activity as a way to get more fitness into our lives."

Several studies have shown that becoming more active in our daily lives can provide the same benefits -- including improvements in risk factors for heart disease -- as a structured exercise program, says Franklin, director of cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Mich.

"You can actually get as much benefit from daily activity as you can by going to a gym -- and maybe more," says Franklin.

Not only that, says physical trainer Dino Novak, ACES, ACSM, but the more you move in your daily life, the more benefits you'll reap from every workout.

"If you are sedentary all week long, when you do hit the gym you've got a lot more ground to cover before you see real progress," says Novak, a master trainer and older adult exercise specialist at the Cooper Institute in Dallas.

In addition, Novak tells WebMD, an active daily life offers fitness advantages you won't find in a gym, no matter how many hours you spend there.

"The whole gym environment, especially if it's machine-based, focuses on very fixed, linear-path movements, but the body doesn't really work that way in real life," says Novak.

For example, he says, if you're walking into the house carrying your dry cleaning, drop your keys, and bend over and turn to pick them up -- all that fixed training you've done in the gym is not going to help much.

"It could even be setting you up for injury if you have muscle imbalances," says Novak.

By putting more activity into your daily life, he says, you'll not only increase your fitness level, but be able to perform routine tasks with more ease -- and, possibly, less risk of injury.

Double Up Your Workout

Another way to sneak more fitness into a busy day is to vary the activities you do during your formal workouts.

Too often, experts say, we get stuck in the rut of doing the same exercise over and over -- be it running on a treadmill, doing circuit training or riding a bike. Yet mastering a single workout isn't necessarily the way to increase fitness. In fact, it might even set you back.