Commute is about two hours a day and I'm out of the house 7:30 to 18:30. The gym is a twelve minute walk and opens at six, so a morning session means a 5:20 alarm. The home option is bodyweight plus two kettlebells, thirty minutes, no travel, but historically the moment I sit down after work it's over. Which of these do people actually sustain?
The one that doesn't require you to defeat yourself after a ten hour day, which for most people on your schedule is the morning, but only if you solve sleep. 5:20 with an 18:30 return means asleep by about ten, so the evening changes too.
If you can't move bedtime, go home-based, but restructure it so sitting down isn't the enemy. Change into kit at the door, do the thirty minutes, then the evening starts. The rule isn't "exercise after work", it's "nothing else happens before it", which is a much easier rule to keep than one requiring willpower at seven in the evening.
Third option nobody mentions: two mornings plus one weekend session. Three a week is plenty and you don't have to sustain a 5:20 alarm five days a week to get it.
Two mornings plus a weekend is much more realistic than either option I'd given myself. Trying that for a month.
Make them fixed days, not two mornings sometime. A floating count is a decision you have to make every night.
Home has won on consistency for me over four years, but only because I removed the friction completely. The kettlebells live in the middle of the living room floor permanently, and they're ugly and in the way. That's the whole trick. Equipment in a cupboard is equipment you don't use.
Price the gym honestly against the sessions you'd actually do. Paying 45 a month for six visits is 7.50 a session and you'll quietly resent it, which is its own habit killer. A class pack or pay-as-you-go removes that particular voice.
Whichever you pick, commit for six weeks and don't re-evaluate weekly. Half the failure in this kind of question is switching approach after nine days and never getting past the initial awfulness of either one.
@shortcut_sam · 7mo ago · 2 replies
The commute is the variable to attack honestly. Two hours a day is ten hours a week and any habit bolted on top is fighting a losing battle. Is any of it walkable or cyclable? I turned 25 minutes of mine into a walk and stopped needing a separate cardio habit at all.
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@negativesplitz · 7mo ago
Part of it is a train so the last mile could be a walk. Hadn't thought about counting the commute as the exercise.
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