Work/Life Balance and Onsite Fitness
Work/life balance is hard to maintain. With a thousand things competing for our attention (family, job, chores, that pesky rent/mortgage that insists on being paid), it’s hard to make time for the things we need to do, let alone the things we want to do. Sadly, fitness is often one of those things that falls to the wayside amidst competing demands on our time.
Even though most people truly do want to be more fit, finding the time is tough. Everyone has different fitness goals—weight loss, increased strength, increased mobility, a healthier heart because the doctor keeps pestering you—we all share a common desire.
We want to be healthier.
One of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is to work out more. Yet despite a spike in gym memberships every January, most fitness resolutions fail within a few months. Why? Because nobody can find the time. A survey found that 79% of American adults were happier when they exercised regularly, but 48% felt that they were too busy to exercise at all. Their work/life balance was unbalanced.
Solutions abound for fixing the work/life balance. Specifically for fitting that fitness into your schedule, one of the most promising solutions is the rise in onsite fitness facilities in the workplace. Onsite fitness provides employees the opportunity to achieve their fitness goals without expending their most precious resource: time. Instead of squeezing an hour (or more) out of your busy schedule to get to the gym, you can simply walk down the hall, spend fifteen to thirty minutes exercising, and return to work. No fighting with traffic. No guilt about taking time from family requirements. Just show up to work, weave some exercise into your schedule, and carry on.
Find your balance.
Even 10 minutes of high-intensity exercise a day has been shown to improve the same health factors as a longer workout. Everyone can spare ten minutes. Even if you can’t manage a high-intensity workout, ten minutes of anything is better than ten minutes of nothing.
So, what are those improved health factors? It’s common knowledge that exercise, even moderate exercise, is proven to increase strength, mobility, and endurance. But it does so much more than that. Exercise improves emotional wellbeing. It reduces stress. It improves memory and concentration. It reduces the risk of disease (from heart to disease to the flu). For older adults, exercise is key to strengthening bones which directly reduces the risks of injury from a fall.
And it doesn’t take much. We all want to be more fit, so why not start today? Go check out that onsite fitness facility at the office. Perhaps they have a class you can join. (MC Corporate Wellness provides a variety of classes throughout the day.) You don’t have to do a lot, just do something. At the end of the day, fitness happened and you will be better for it, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
You’ll have found your balance.