People often ask me how to find time to train as much as I do. The honest answer starts in an office a few years ago, where I was the Hungarian country manager for a sports retailer and, by coincidence, most of our marketing team were runners. The same hobby at very different levels: one of the younger guys ran at national level, a couple had only just started, and I was racing the quadrathlon World Cup, where running was my strongest discipline. We shared the sport. We didn’t share the attitude, and after a few seasons you could see the difference in who was still running.

Same Sport, Different Lives

The young runner came to work running, ate the meals he’d prepared, did his stretching during breaks, and rarely talked about any of it. Getting advice out of him was hard work. He wasn’t hiding anything. He was just minding his own business, living a simple and very focused life around the thing he loved: working in a running department, doing the training, going to races.

The other one was the centre of the team. Friendly, talkative, the kind of person you feel like you’ve known for years after a few hours, and he wrote the website’s articles on how to run better. When I made my monthly visit to the office, he was the one I could share a beer with at lunch, and again in the evening. That same easygoing nature was why his training never stayed on track. He never missed a whole week, only a day here and there, followed by a catch-up session to make up for it, usually a big one, the kind that collects kudos, plus the fun races he signed up for without any plan. His first year was great. Then the progress flattened, the injuries started coming one after another, and within a few seasons he had stopped running and moved on to something else entirely.

One Account for Everything

I don’t think he did anything wrong. He had a fun life, and he chose most of it. But his body was paying for all of it out of one account, the late evenings, the beers, the work, the missed runs and the hero sessions that followed them, and it doesn’t keep a separate one for training. Sleep lost to a night out comes out of the same budget a hard run does, and so does stress at work.

What I Cut at Fifty

My own last decade looked more like his than like the young runner’s, just with a longer list. I wanted to earn well and be good at my job, be a good enough father, race the World Cup, take the family on adventures, organise hiking and running days for friends, and still fit in SUP, paragliding, motorcycling and via ferrata. It sounds like a lot. It took me years to notice that it was.

At my fiftieth birthday a few weeks ago I decided to narrow it down. Being a good father to my son comes first. My health comes second, because I want to be around for a long time, and that means sleep, managing stress, eating as well as I reasonably can, which isn’t the same as eating perfectly, and training I actually enjoy. For the next couple of years that means endurance sport, with the other sports only now and then. Work is where I have the most freedom, so that’s where the rest of the cutting happened: side work instead of a full-time job, a smaller budget, quality of life over a higher standard of living. I stopped organising group events, and now I see the few people who matter most to me, often while training with them. It’s much closer to my young colleague’s simple, focused life than to the one I had before, and so far I enjoy it far more than the colourful, chaotic version.

How to Find Time to Train: The Part Anyone Can Use

So, back to the question of how I find the time. The answer has two parts, and only one of them is useful to most people. The first is that I don’t have a nine-to-five, which came from decisions ten years ago: saving, investing, spending less than I could have. I can’t hand that to anyone as advice. The second part anyone can use, whatever their job. I turn as much of the day as I can into training. The commute is the obvious one, the way my young colleague used to run to work. Time with my son is another: I run while he cycles, and we explore or talk about his day, and in the evening we do the stretching we both need for different reasons. When friends want to meet, I suggest a walk or a run instead of a beer. The scrolling time went too, and sleep, meals and training happen at roughly the same times every day. Underneath all of it is deciding what’s important and learning to say no to everything that isn’t, and that part is hard.

That has a price, and I’d rather name it. I have no idea what’s on Netflix, I miss most of the celebrity news and political gossip, and I skip most of the big gatherings where I’d be one of a hundred people invited. It’s the same kind of trade people make for a balanced life. It just lands in different places.

A balanced life takes the same kind of compromises as a committed one, and either way you miss things. I’ve tried both, and at fifty I know which trade-offs I want to make, including the pain and the downsides that come with them. Neither is better than the other. What matters is that you chose it yourself, and didn’t just drift into living by expectations that nobody ever actually put on you.

Questions People Ask

How do you find time to train with a full-time job?

Mostly by turning parts of the day you already have into training rather than adding new blocks: running or cycling the commute, being active with family instead of watching them, and meeting friends for a walk or run. Keeping sleep, meals and training at roughly the same times each day makes it far easier to hold.

Does stress affect recovery from training?

Yes. A study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research found that people under high chronic psychological stress recovered muscle function more slowly over the four days after the same hard session than people under low stress. Work and life stress draw on the same recovery capacity training does.

Why do catch-up workouts lead to injuries?

One long or hard session costs more recovery than the normal sessions it replaces, and it usually lands right after a gap, when the body is least ready for it. Repeated often enough, that pattern stalls progress and raises injury risk, even when the monthly total looks fine.

Can you train seriously and still have a balanced life?

Both cost something. Training seriously means missing some social and family events, and a broader balance means accepting slower progress. Neither is wrong; the useful part is choosing the trade-off deliberately rather than drifting into one.