Have you started an exercise program with the best of intentions, only to lose motivation and quit? You’re not alone!
According to Australian guidelines on physical activity, we should be active most days of the week (if not all of them). The goal is at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise per week, or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise – including at least two days of muscle strengthening exercises. That’s 30 minutes of exercise five times per week. Sounds doable!
However, most Aussies aren’t getting anywhere near this target. Why is it that some people can stick to their programs and some not? What are the tricks people who never skip a workout use?
The truth is that for some of us, exercise = work. Running, yoga, fitness classes, and weight training all require time and effort. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it, right?
For many of us, our attitude towards exercise is more like our attitude towards Brussels sprouts: we do it because we were told it’s good for us, but really, yuck!
If you’re struggling with workout motivation, this guide is for you. I’ve covered 11 of my best tips to boost your motivation, plus five strategies to make fitness work for your lifestyle.
Read on and get ready to make a change!
How to Get Motivated to Exercise: 11 Top Tips
We are all guilty of coming up with an excuse at one time or another – I don’t have time, I’m too tired, the kids, it’s boring, I can’t afford it, I’m not getting any results, and so on.
But sometimes, this de-motivating chatter is only in your head and not how you really feel about breaking a sweat. Follow these strategies, and I promise you’ll never utter the words ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ again.
Here are 11 foolproof tips to boost your motivation to exercise:
1. Train for gain, not punishment
Train to embrace who you are, not to punish yourself. Although I fully endorse a smash ’em up session, do it from a place of encouragement, not of guilt. Being critical undermines your sense of self worth and saps motivation.
Listen to your self talk. You should be saying positive things such as “I can do this! Feel the burn, love the burn, I want to challenge myself, I will feel so amazing when I am finished.”
A lot of people have very negative self-talk around exercise. For example, “I am too tired, old, unfit or stressed to go hard today. I can’t do this, there’s no way. What if I can’t finish? What if I get the slowest time? What if I fall off my bike? Come on, after all that pizza and beer last night you deserve to be smashed!”
Would you talk to others that way? Are you maybe just a wee bit tough on yourself? Give yourself a break and cut the internal bickering!
If you cut out the guilt and self-criticism, you should find that the pressures we put around exercise will stop. For example, if you miss a session, that does mean you’re lazy? No, it means you missed a session, that’s it.
2. Make exercise fun again
Believe it or not, exercise should be something you enjoy! Even when you’re pushing yourself to the limits, don’t take it too seriously. You may need to mix pleasant, fun activities in with your gruelling sessions for balance.
If you’re bored with hitting the gym, try some outdoor workouts instead. Change it up, get social, and join a local running club. Try some new activities to keep interesting – from skipping workouts to hot yoga, there’s plenty to choose from.
So many people just do the same gym program or the same run or the same class week in and week out. If nothing changes, progress slows or stops and you get bored and unmotivated. Variety will eliminate boredom and stop routine creeping in.
Pick some new activities that you might enjoy – the change will keep your body challenging, and you can increase the exercise intensity as you improve.
3. Feel the burn, love the burn
When the heat rises in a session, so too does your doubt. Suddenly you question if your body can cope, and the negative self talk comes out to haunt you.
When you get outside your comfort zone in a workout, one thing to repeat over and over again is ”feel the burn, love the burn.” Sounds silly right? But it works!
Embrace the burning feeling you get in your muscles and lungs, and learn to love this feeling. This is the point in the workout where you are really making a difference! From burning body fat to muscle gains, the discomfort zone is where it happens.
Next time you feel like you can’t do one more push-up, or you can’t make that last sprint home, just repeat to yourself, “Feel the burn, love the burn” and before long you will have achieved some kick-ass results!
4. Surround yourself with fitness inspiration
Find lighthouses in your life – the people who make you feel good, energetic, and strong. It might be friends or family, or it might be sporting heroes and celebrities. It may even be a movie or workout music. If it takes listening to the Rocky soundtrack to get excited, then do it!
Have your favourite fitness quotes up to inspire you, too. Motivational quotes have the power to shift a person from inaction to action, from lethargy to inspired, from inactive to incredibly active.
When I see the right words, they really make me want to get up and get going, turn my dreams into reality and work towards what I really want in life. Don’t you ever get that way when you read a good quote?
Take this one for instance – “The difference between try and triumph is a little UMPH!” – simple, yet so effective.
5. Add a social twist to your workouts
Workout buddies are a great motivational tool! They lift you up when you’re feeling flat and create that social outlet that makes exercise so much more enjoyable. Plus it adds some healthy competition to your fitness routine.
If you’re scheduling a catch-up with a friend over cocktails, turn that into an opportunity to work out too. Meet up with them over a Pump or Spin session and you’ll notice how much more inspiring and fun a post-work workout can be. Plus, you can go to a delicious sushi dinner after!
It may not be practical for every session but aim for at least one ‘social workout’ per week.
6. Attach a perk to exercise
Want a treat? Treat it as your motivation! If a glass of red wine or a small chocolate bar is your after-work treat, then save it as motivation for when you’ve finished your workout.
Studies have shown that if you look forward to something after a workout, even if it’s a small treat, you’re more motivated to go to the gym. Plus you might work harder on the cross-trainer too – double win!
While there needs to be a perk attached to your workout, it doesn’t have to be a treat. It might be meeting a treasured friend for a training date, enjoying a beautiful sunrise during a morning run, or beating the traffic with an early-morning gym sesh.
7. Make a commitment you can’t escape
There’s nothing like a lock-in contract to keep you on track! If you can hold yourself accountable, commit to an exact number of workouts each week. No exceptions!
If this means your skipped sessions midweek lands you a weekend of activity, so be it. Personally, I like to get it over and done with midweek so I can relax on the weekend.
Another great strategy is to join an exercise group and pay upfront: 6 weeks of boxing classes, a 12-week challenge in the gym, or 10 personal training sessions. If you’ve spent the money, you’ll feel compelled to go – plus, you’ll get the support from your peers or trainer.
8. Recruit a training buddy
Most people think of a ‘training buddy’ as someone that you actually train with, but that’s not always the case. A true training buddy is anyone who is committed to your journey to the same degree as you are – maybe even more!
A training buddy could be a running partner, but it could also be a family member, a trainer, your online followers or virtual friend.
The best training buddies:
- Need you just as much as you need them
- Are reliable
- Always encouraging
- There for support when you need it
- Assist you with programming and advice
- Competitive but in a healthy, sportsman-like way
- Hold you accountable for your sessions
- Make workouts much more enjoyable
9. Make your fitness journey public
If you’re struggling to hold yourself accountable, go public with your fitness goals! Tell friends, family, Twitter followers, Instagram friends – anyone and everyone who might help you stay on track.
No one wants to see you fail, and more importantly, you wouldn’t want to see yourself fail in front of everyone else. When motivation is low, that little voice in your head will take over: ‘How much stick am I getting to get if I don’t do it?’
Accountability also helps you make more realistic goals in future. If you want to stick to them, you need to refrain from over-committing yourself.
10. Change into your workout gear
Struggling to get out the door? Change into your workout gear first! This is an age-old theory that never seems to fail me, and I assure you it won’t for you either.
If you’re planning a sweat session after work, don’t think about changing into your running gear at the gym. Change into your workout gear before you leave the office (while you’re still up for a run) and notice how no wandering thoughts will curb your motivation to hit the treadmill.
By doing so, you’re also making yourself more accountable to yourself and the people around you. It’s basic psychology – after all, you wouldn’t want a change of clothes to go to waste!
11. Follow the 5-minute rule
If you’re really feeling blah about working up a sweat, go by the ‘only 5 minutes’ rule. Tell yourself that you’ll work out for a maximum of five minutes, then dive right in!
It’s a great test to find out if you’re really too tired to work out or not. My bet: 9 times out of 10, you’ll want to continue after those 5 minutes and keep going until you feel good.
5 Tips to Stick to Your Workout Program
All of us know the benefits of regular exercise, and most of us are keen to exercise regularly, but too often “stuff” gets in the way.
No matter how much motivation you have, if you don’t make fitness work for you, you’re setting yourself up to fail.
Here are five ways to make sure you stick to your workouts:
1. Make Exercise Convenient For You
All of us have busy lives – between work, study, family, social life, and all of our other responsibilities, it’s hard to find time to exercise.
One of the biggest mistakes is overcommitting, then losing motivation to drive 45 minutes to the gym each day. If you want to stick to a workout program, pick a time and a place that works for you.
Schedule your workouts for your ideal time of day to exercise – when you’re not too tired, too busy, or having things ‘pop up’ all the time.
Working out close to home or work is best. There’s some research that says a 12-minute radius is the magic number – in other words, whether that’s walking or driving, pick a gym that takes less than 12 minutes to get to.
2. Schedule Your Workouts
My favourite and most important tip (one that I follow on a daily basis) is to set your workout session as a ‘meeting’ on your Google, Apple or Outlook calendars – whatever it is that you use.
Break your daily activity into three 10-minute blocks, and put a workout in your work diary at lunchtime as a ‘private appointment’.
If you get an alert for a boot camp session on your phone, then you’re less likely to miss it or worse, be lazy about it. Try this for a week and note down how many ‘meetings’ you miss!
Alternatively, treat your session like a dentist appointment – would you blow this appointment off if you saw it in your diary? No, you would show up as you know it is important!
3. Have a Plan B
Away from home with work? Raining outside? Gym closed or no time to get there? You could just let the session go – or you could go to the plan B.
If you usually work out at the gym, try preparing a home exercise program you can do indoors without equipment. You can do a great session in 20 minutes if you have a plan – think about including some skipping, stair climbs, hill jogs, trunk work and some stretches to finish.
Having a clear plan stops the obstacle of not knowing what to do and using this as an excuse.
4. Get organised the night before
Planning a morning workout? Lay out your clothes, bottle, towel or whatever you need to get you out the door on the couch. Nothing keeps you under the doona longer than procrastinating on what you are going to wear! Download some new tunes or maybe a podcast so the beats get you going.
5. Schedule some time off
If you are training consistently, then taking time off is vital to stay motivated long-term. You should not train at the same level for 52 weeks a year! In fact, it’s a good idea to take a break from exercise every 5 to 6 weeks.
We call these weeks ‘unloading weeks’ in sports conditioning. By reducing the number and intensity of sessions, you give yourself a physical and mental refresh.
This may mean easing back to some low-intensity sessions or swapping training for a slower daily walk. Rest gives the body a chance to catch up and recover, and it gives you a mental break to rejuvenate
Holidays are the perfect time to do this, but work deadlines or exam periods may also be a good time to take it easy. I bet you miss the workouts and come back rearing to go!
Next Steps
My top tip to stay motivated? Don’t see-saw between who you are and who you want to be. Choose one and commit to it fully.
Look at your past results in fitness, and in other areas of your life. Are you happy with the results? If you are, then great, keep sticking at it. But if not, you need to make a conscious decision to change something.
One thing is certain: if you don’t change your behaviour, then your results won’t change either. Your choices today are the only thing that will determine your future.
Remember: action breeds motivation. Make a choice. Be the person you have always been or choose to make a shift and alter who you become.
Embrace that choice and choose it fully. Then and only then will you shift the past patterns that have led to who you are today.
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