One of the main struggles people have with their exercise is being able to exercise consistently and keep motivated to do this.
It’s often a lot easier to miss your exercise session while at the same time promising yourself that you’ll do the next one. This can create an unhelpful habit that holds you back and makes it harder to reach your goals like improving your health and fitness, or losing weight.
That’s why it’s so important to keep exercising consistently and keep motivated. Here are 4 tips to help you do this…
1. Have a plan
For the people who do my classes you already have your sessions planned in with days and times which is a huge help. However, you may also want to do some sessions in your other time, like a run or fitness DVD.
Many people only start thinking about what their next session will be on the day, or just before they’re about to do it. They haven’t planned a specific session which then makes it a lot easier to skip it. So it’s important to plan your sessions at least a day before so that you know exactly what you’ll be doing.
The best way to do this is where you plan in the days that you will exercise, as well as the exact times. So you schedule your exercise into your day just like you would with any other appointment, and then you stick to it unless something urgent crops up and you have to cancel.
You make your physical and mental health and fitness a priority, knowing that they determine your quality of life.
You have the mindset NOT of “I’ll see how I feel at the time and then decide whether to exercise” which makes it much less likely to happen. You have the mindset of “Today I’m doing my session at 6pm”.
When you know what your training plan is, and what exercise sessions you’ll do, it prepares your mind ready to carry them out. You become more focused and are more committed to actually getting them done.
2. Prepare your training clothes before
Sometimes it may get towards the time you are going to do a session but then you don’t feel like it. Things like feeling tired, the weather, or it being more comfortable to stay in the house can all play a part. So the session gets dropped.
If this affects you, then a good thing to do is to prepare your training clothes before. You could do this the night before or first thing in the morning.
Then when it’s time to do your session you’ll now feel much more like doing it. You’ve already got your clothes ready and that can give you the push to get out there and do your session.
The other plus side is that you’ll also not want to put your clothes away because it confirms that you had planned a session and then backed out. You’ve just wasted another day when you could have been exercising and making more progress to what’s important to you.
3. Remind yourself how you feel after doing your exercise
When it comes to the time of doing your exercise you may find it tempting to miss your session. This is often due to poor planning, tiredness, or putting your health, fitness, and wellbeing behind other priorities.
But how do you feel when you miss your session? Do you think “Yes, I’ve missed my session, I feel great?” Not very likely!
The chances are that you miss your session and then you regret it. It’s another day wasted where you could have been making improvements to your health and fitness, or losing weight, and you chose not to.
On the other hand, when you get in your session you come back feeling so glad that you did it. You feel more alive and you have plenty of satisfaction from knowing that you’ve just taken another positive step towards getting what you want out of your exercise.
So the next time you think about missing your session remember that you will feel so much better for doing it. Plus you will also feel much more positive for the rest of the day.
4. Remember what you’re trying to achieve
Many people exercise inconsistently and miss too many sessions because they don’t remind themselves enough about what they want to get out of exercise and all the benefits they’ll experience.
So it’s then easy to think things like “I’ll miss today, I might do Wednesday instead” or “Never mind, it’s only one session”.
However, all this is doing is making everything that you want from exercise take much longer to achieve.
Every time you miss your session it’s another day wasted where you could have been making great progress towards what you want but you chose not to. It also means another day in your life where you may be unhappy about your health, fitness, weight, or body.
So it’s very important to keep remembering what you’re trying to achieve and this will help you to keep exercise much more consistently. You’ll then get all the positive benefits from exercise that will make a great difference to your life much sooner.
Exercise consistently and keep motivated
By following these 4 tips you are going to exercise much more consistently and you’ll have lots of motivation to keep it up.
You will then keep building on your fitness and keep getting better and better. That means you’re going to get so much more out of exercise like improving your health and fitness, losing weight, and getting a better looking body. These things will have such a positive impact on your life.
So keep up the consistent exercise, keep your motivation high, and just see what you can achieve!
James Porter