Three Tips to Guarantee You’ll Stick To Your Fitness Routine
If you’ve ever begun a fitness routine only to give up a few weeks later, keep reading.
Starting any routine is challenging.
After all, it’s a break from your norm.
Even my morning routine, which lasts all of 10 minutes and consists of some stretching, a few glasses of water, and a short meditation, proved difficult to sustain in the first few months.
In the age of instant gratification, anything that isn’t immediately satisfying can feel like a chore to start.
Not only does the effort itself feel burdensome, but the alternatives at our fingertips are undeniably appealing: some scrolling on Instagram, maybe some texting. The snooze button. A bit of TV.
If it’s so easy to veer off course from a 10-minute morning routine, how could somebody ever sustain a workout habit? Especially someone that doesn’t particularly like working out?
To answer this question, I’ll combine a bit of research with some personal anecdotes.
First, we need to talk about goal-setting.
Tip 1: Set goals that you can achieve.
We hear people setting lofty goals all the time (get ready for endless New Years resolutions in less than two months!). But how often are these goals actually achieved?
Well…not often. What gives?
One of the single biggest shortfalls in individual goal-setting is attainability. In other words, is the goal actually achievable? Could the real you accomplish it? Or is the goal only realistic for the happy, struggle-free, ultra-motivated, got-a-full-8-hours version of yourself?
Psychological research has given us a menu of varied goal-setting to consider, but there’s a common threads through almost all of them.
It’s that your goals should be realistic.
It can be hard to feel like you’re not short changing yourself when you set more grounded goals. After all, it feels good to make goals lofty. But creating unrealistic goals for yourself can set you up for disappointment and self doubt. When we don’t feel like we’re making progress toward the goals we set for ourselves, we tend to give up, even if we actually have made a bit of headway.
Here’s a simple example.
Let’s say you set an objective to get to the gym five times a week. In the first week, you get to the gym all five times. The second week, though, gets busy at work, and you only make it to the gym three times. In just a week, you’ve fallen short.
But, say you’ve set a more realistic goal of three gym sessions per week. The first week, you make it all three times. The same for the second and third.
By the fourth, you’re feeling great about your progress, and that energy propels you to squeak in a fourth workout. The next week, your schedule picks up a bit, so you stick with your baseline of three.
That’s five weeks of accomplishment — and five weeks of momentum.
Right now, the foundation of my fitness routine is three days a week in the gym. I haven’t missed a week since I can remember. And it’s not because I’m the epitome of discipline. I just have reasonable goals.
That doesn’t mean your goals should be low and unchallenging — say, hitting the gym once a week. It means finding a healthy balance between pushing yourself and doing the bare minimum.
Now, let’s dive a bit deeper into the cornerstones of a sustainable fitness routine.
Specifics aside, there’s one simple tactic I’ve used to sustain a level of activity that’s kept me healthy, energetic, and looking acceptable.
Tip 2: Balance structure and novelty in your routine.
It can be difficult to parse helpful information when you try to determine whether structure or novelty is better for you.
Well, depending on the context, each has its merits.
When we consider the value of feelings like groundedness, predictability, and simplicity, structure deserves much praise. Maybe you look forward to a trivia night each Tuesday or a regular takeout order from your favorite Thai spot every Friday.
Not only does this kind of structure provide something to look forward to, but it also scratches our very human itch for certainty.
A massive body of shows that humans are awful at coping with uncertainty, and a bit of structure in our schedule helps remove a bit of that instability from our daily lives.
In addition, a healthy dose of structure minimizes unnecessary decision-making. Facing too many daily decisions can be mentally taxing, and structure helps us avoid that cognitive burden.
When it comes to fitness, some structure affords us not only predictability, but also a baseline against which to measure.
Say you want to improve your chest strength. If you’re jumping among dumbbell bench press, machine flies, and push-ups with no weekly rhythm, you’re constantly shifting your frame of reference for progress.
Novelty, however, is the perfect complement to structure. A bit of variety can help you incorporate new challenges into your workout and make you feel like you’re working out not only your body, but your mind.
Plus, novelty is .
To balance novelty and structure in my fitness routine, I do a full-body weightlifting program that consists of two lower-body exercises, two shoulder exercises, two chest exercises, and two back exercises. The structure is the 2/2/2/2 scaffolding, but within this framework, I do whatever exercises I’m most interested in doing that way.
Then, if time allows, I mix in one or two isolation exercises that I enjoy (biceps curls, bicycle crunches, and farmers’ carries are my favorites).
Adding a layer of variety on top of a foundation of predictability is a surefire way to stick to your fitness routine.
Combine these two tips with the third, and you’ll be a fitness fanatic in no time.
Tip 3: Make it as easy as possible to do your workouts.
How many times have you felt motivated when you think vaguely about a goal, but when the time comes, you have trouble just…starting?
shows that obstacles to habit building are a surefire way to stifle your progress right out of the gate.
Let’s stick with our fitness examples. Say you tend to wake up a bit later than you like and find yourself in a rush in the morning. The only time you have to workout, however, is in the morning — you’re typically working late and exhausted by the time you punch out.
Do you really think you’ll make it to the gym in the morning if your shorts are lost, your shirt is buried in a drawer, your sneakers are deep in the closet, your gym back is somewhere in the living room, and your water bottle is unfilled?
No chance.
Your best hope? Remove any and all difficulty from the process.
What would that look like here? For one, you could sleep in your gym clothes. You could also set a reminder on your phone before bedtime to put a your filled water bottle on your nightstand. You can leave your sneakers at the foot of your bed.
All you’re doing is removing friction. You’re creating as much ease as possible for yourself to get going and sustain the consistency that is so critical for success.
