Why 10 Minutes in the Courtyard Beats an Hour at the Gym

Health and fitness has always been a massive value for me. Top three, easily. But when I became a parent, the whole approach had to change.

Gone are the days of a 45 minute gym session. An hour and a half out of the day? That just does not exist anymore. Not when you have got young children, a business to run, and about four hours of usable time before the chaos starts.

The Courtyard Workout

So what do you do? You adapt. You find 10 minutes in the courtyard of a terrace house in London. You are not exactly doing laps out there. But you can get a solid workout done. Bench pressing your children counts, by the way. Squats with the toddler is always a winner.

The point is this. You do not need the perfect setup. You need consistency in a small space with whatever you have got.

Routines Are Christmas Trees

I always think of routines like Christmas trees. James Clear wrote about this in Atomic Habits. You have these anchor points, and you can add micro habits onto the core activity.

Here is how mine works. I go downstairs. Pint of water. Vitamins. Then the workout. Then a protein shake as I am going upstairs to shower. Shower and get dressed. Then straight into looking after the children.

That is three or four things done in a very short window. Almost subconsciously. You are stacking, not scheduling.

Why This Matters for Founders

When you are running a business and raising a family, you do not have the luxury of a two hour morning routine. You have got to be ruthless with your time. Exercise is not a nice to have. It is the thing that keeps everything else running.

Hydration matters too. During the day, staying on top of water intake is something I would add to the list. It sounds basic, but the basics are what compound.

The real shift for me was accepting that 10 minutes done consistently beats 60 minutes done occasionally. You have got to work with the life you actually have, not the one you had before children.

If you are a parent and a founder, you already know this tension. The question is whether you are building small habits into the gaps, or waiting for a window that never opens.

What does your routine look like as a founder parent? I would genuinely like to know.