It’s very easy to convince yourself to skip out on your exercise routine for the day or week. Even when you’ve got the best of intentions to exercise, it’s super easy to come up with several excuses that, by the way, all look extremely valid in your own eyes. Do a few of these sound familiar; “The weather is bad” or “I’m too busy” or “I’m too tired”? The list can go on and on forever.
A few tricks and the right attitude can help keep you on track with your fitness program. Rewarding yourself with some delicious fast food once in a while can end up being a great idea. Knowing you can look forward to some fast food and casual dining nutrition is something that can help motivate you to stay on track with your workout program. Besides that, herein below are a few other tricks you can try out.
Mixing It Up
Avoid sticking to one type of workout. Do different things to work-out different muscle groups as well as to keep things interesting. If cardio is your thing and the stair climber is what you’re good at and is where you’ve got game, switch things up a bit and start using the elliptical machine. You can also try switching between free weights and machine when you’re strength-training. We’re not saying you overhaul your entire weekly routine, just shift things around a bit.
Bring A Friend
When the inner demons in you start trying to convince you to ditch the bench press and treadmill for the living room couch, having an exercise partner could be just what you need to help steer you back into the right direction. Furthermore, it’s way harder to bail out on a friend than it is the gym. You don’t have to give the gym an explanation, for starters. Research has also shown that you’ll be able to exercise longer when you’ve got a friend working out beside you.
Take Baby Steps
On day one, would you ever try to run fifteen miles or something like that? You wouldn’t right? When you put too much on yourself too soon all you really do is end up discouraged, injured and sore. You can’t take in everything at once. Life wasn’t designed that way and the same goes for working out as well. As you get yourself started, try to take it easy and crawl before you run, as they say. Maybe on your first week, you just hit a quarter mile or so. When that gets easy gradually up the challenge. This would no doubt be one of the most ideal ways to go about it.
All in all, the most important thing here is that you should always try to remember that change doesn’t happen in a day or two. It takes weeks of hard work to see any real credible change. Understanding this will help give you the motivation to stick in there and go at it until the end. Nonetheless, don’t forget to celebrate each step of the way.