There’s no way around it: working out regularly can be a drag\u2014and knowing how to stick to a workout routine is an entirely different barbell to wrestle with. No matter how strong your resolve, or how many tricks you pull to keep things interesting, hitting the snooze button or watching football on the sofa always seem far more inviting than time spent on the treadmill.<\/p>\n
The only remedy for this issue is to catch the fitness bug for life. And the good news is there are many infectious ways to make this happen if you ease off the pressure to get ripped immediately.<\/p>\n
Now that resolution season<\/a> is pretty much behind us, we hit up an expert duo to share their best self-serving hacks that will keep you showing up, come rain, shine, or the lure of prime time TV.<\/p>\n Why most workout routines fail<\/p>\n More often than not, people bail because expectations are misaligned with reality. Eloise Skinner<\/a>, Third Space personal trainer and psychotherapist says that time pressures are a common culprit: \u201cSince it can take a considerable amount of time to engage in a regular workout routine, and people might choose workout routines that don’t necessarily fit around their current lifestyles.\u201d Say you work a 50 hour week, have seven kids and want to start training for an ultra-marathon<\/a>. Whie not technically impossible, the margin for burnout is obvious.<\/p>\n Many people also anchor to tangible, visible goals, and when these are not immediately achieved, commitment quickly wanes. \u201cThere is no point [in fitness] where you\u2019re \u2018done\u2019 and get to stop. Once people realize working out isn\u2019t temporary, a lot of them mentally check out,\u201d says Raphael Akobundu, nurse practitioner at Huddle Men\u2019s Health<\/a>.<\/p>\n Unrealistic aesthetic goals further complicate things. Skinner says: \u201cOne of the biggest mistakes is to expect big changes quickly, or base one’s progress on external, aesthetic goals,\u201d she says. \u201cOften an aesthetic goal is difficult to obtain in the idealized form that someone might imagine. This also becomes quite an unfulfilling pursuit over time. Fitness routines take considerable time to build and changes aren\u2019t always evident in the first few months.\u201d<\/p>\n Akobundu explains that it takes at least 6 weeks to see immediate changes, but most give up by week four, negating the plethora of other benefits which improve your quality of life, listed by Skinner: \u201cBetter posture<\/a>, improved heart health<\/a>, reduced injuries<\/a>, and improved stamina<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The bottomline? People quit too soon. Once that momentum is lost, getting back on track feels twice as hard, leading your brain to associate fitness with sucking. With that in mind, here are a few ways to ensure you don\u2019t give up before things start to click.<\/p>\n 1. Make your routine fit your life<\/p>\n It might seem obvious but only you know what workout is actually going to work. And if you don\u2019t, it\u2019s time to get brutally real with your schedule.<\/p>\n How? Akobundu suggests a two-stage plan which involves looking at what a real, unfiltered week<\/a> looks like for you. Ask yourself: \u201cWhen do you wake up? When do you get home? What days of the week are already packed? At what time do your children require your presence?\u201d Then, we fill in the blanks. \u201cMaybe you have 30 minutes available each day during lunch, three times a week. Or, maybe you have 60 minutes available on Sundays prior to the family waking up.\u201d<\/p>\n The final piece of the puzzle is to accommodate your energy levels. If you genuinely require three pre-9 a.m. coffees<\/a> before facing social interaction, sunrise workouts<\/a> probably aren\u2019t for you. Or if your evenings are packed with genuine fixed plans (note: binge-watching is not a permissible excuse), block that time out, too. \u201cA good plan is one you can accomplish. A perfect plan you cannot complete, is pointless,\u201d says Akobundu. \u201cView exercise routine as part of who you are and understand that this will look differently depending on the season of life you are currently in.\u201d<\/p>\n 2. Find something you enjoy<\/p>\n This is fitness advicec 101. Enjoying something, Skinner explains \u201cis associated with the endorphin and dopamine boost we get from physical movement and exercise.\u201d Your brain remembers pleasure, so the more pleasure you afford it, the more of it you’ll crave. Doing something you love therefore \u201ccreates a kind of self-reinforcing loop, where we enjoy an activity, get a dopamine boost from it, continue doing it and eventually (over the long term) associate it with our own sense of identity,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n 3. Prepare the night before<\/p>\n Get your head in the game with visual aids such as \u201cseeing your running shoes<\/a> laid out, preparing your protein intake<\/a> and logging workouts in advance,\u201d says Skinner. \u201cThis kind of preparation can help us remove the friction of starting an activity, allowing us to build momentum in an easy, straightforward way. Seeing evidence of our previous commitment to the activity can also remind us of who we want to be, or promises we previously made to ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n 4. Track progress without obsessing<\/p>\n \u201cRecord what you did. That\u2019s it,\u201d says Akobundu. \u201cSimply record the basics: date, exercises<\/a>, weight<\/a>, reps. That will take no more than 30 seconds to do after your workout.\u201d This will act as a reminder of how hard you worked when you look back after 6 weeks and realize what you have accomplished.\u201d It\u2019s all about building the bigger picture. And on that note, Akobundu strongly advises against tracking daily weight. \u201cYour weight will fluctuate daily due to water retention, your diet and timing of your meals. If you choose to track your weight at all, do not track it daily and instead focus on tracking performance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s no way around it: working out regularly can be a drag\u2014and knowing how to stick to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[64,63,538,137,64099,13221],"class_list":{"0":"post-458479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fitness","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fitness","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-life-advice","13":"tag-working-out"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}