There’s no way around it: working out regularly can be a drag—and 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.
Now that resolution season 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.
More often than not, people bail because expectations are misaligned with reality. Eloise Skinner , Third Space personal trainer and psychotherapist says that time pressures are a common culprit: “Since 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.” Say you work a 50 hour week, have seven kids and want to start training for an ultra-marathon . Whie not technically impossible, the margin for burnout is obvious.
Many people also anchor to tangible, visible goals, and when these are not immediately achieved, commitment quickly wanes. “There is no point [in fitness] where you’re ‘done’ and get to stop. Once people realize working out isn’t temporary, a lot of them mentally check out,” says Raphael Akobundu, nurse practitioner at Huddle Men’s Health .
Unrealistic aesthetic goals further complicate things.
Skinner says: “One of the biggest mistakes is to expect big changes quickly, or base one’s progress on external, aesthetic goals,” she says. “Often 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’t always evident in the first few months.”
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’t give up before things start to click.
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