How Can I Stay Motivated To Exercise?

November 22, 2021

When we first set out on a journey to improve our fitness, we imagine healthy eating, training 6 days a week, adding in some yoga and stretching after work, and it feels like nothing in the world can stop us.

Then life happens, you work late one day, skip a meal, the weather changes and all of a sudden all of your friends are having birthday parties and the fitness goal starts to fade in to the background.

Doing turns in to thinking, which turns in to dreaming once again. The motivation that once made you feel invincible has long departed.

Staying motivated isn’t easy but it is certainly not impossible. There is no one size fits all approach to improving your fitness, but by following a few simple steps you can set yourself up to keep your motivation high and succeed.

 

Have A Goal

At some level there must be a reason why you began exercising in the first place. Was it to lose weight? To improve balance? To play sport at a higher level? Or simply just for the joy of movement?

Remembering why you started and what you are trying to achieve will make it much easier to take another step forward.

Goals are unique for everybody, and can evolve over time as our inner and outer state changes. A trip to the gym may have started out as a way to lose weight, whereas now it forms part of your daily feel good routine.

It is perfectly natural to shift the goal posts as the capabilities of your body rise and fall. What might have seemed impossible in the past now might be so second nature to you that it’s time to set a new goal to keep your motivation high.

Another way to fuel motivation towards your goal is by tracking your progress. This can be in a little book where you write down the results that you have each day, or it might just be a mental note that you make each time that your performance increases. Celebrate every little improvement that you make and keep pushing.

 

Find Someone To Hold You Accountable

There’s an old proverb that says, “A problem shared is a problem halved”. Meaning that having the support of someone around you can drastically lighten the load. Finding someone to train with will have the added benefit of providing extra motivation to get out of bed in the morning when it’s cold and dark outside.

It’s also a lot harder to skip the gym when you know you have someone waiting for you there. This could be a friend, a personal trainer – anyone who will hold you to account for your decision to turn up or stay home.

Group classes are another great way to share the struggles of exercise. Spin class, pilates, H.I.I.T groups and yoga are just some examples of environments that create an atmosphere of achievement which will help motivate you to keep showing up.

 

Keep Things Interesting

Sticking to the same routine can become boring over time, leading us to not find as much enjoyment from our workouts as we potentially could. It’s important to balance out mental stimulation along side the physical in order to keep things fresh.

Aside from working new muscle groups and shocking your body in to a higher level of strength and fitness, a varied routine can also help you to find new enjoyment and motivation to hit your goals.

Something as simple as changing your grip on a machine to target a different muscle can be a great way to include variation, right down to mixing up your training schedule to a different time of the day or day of the week.

So if leg day has always been a Monday for you, rather than heading directly towards the leg press machine, consider variations like box jumps, band work or treadmill sprints to target different muscle fibres.

 

Train To Your Own Tune

It can be difficult to enjoy your workouts if the sound track playing in the background is driving you up the wall. Musical tastes vary drastically from person to person and it can be quite hard to focus on your training with unpalatable sounds bombarding you from all angles, especially if the gym that you train at is quite noisy or has a lot of members who grunt with every rep.

Thankfully there is an endless array of wireless headphones to choose from these days; consider picking up a pair and swapping gym noise for your favourite tunes.

Not only will they put you in the mood, they can also contribute to enhanced performance by reducing fatigue and keeping you mentally alert. Tracks that play within a certain BPM range also can assist with the type of workout that you are doing by helping you get in to the rhythm, think up tempo beats that match your stride when you go running.

 

Keep Eating Clean

A body that is healthy and full of clean energy will naturally feel primed for exercising and staying in shape. At SwoleFoods we make your wellbeing our priority and have carefully crafted meals that will contribute to an overall healthy state. Order now and to start saving time on cooking and stay on top of your nutrition today!