Tina’s Top Ten Tips for Exercise Consistency.
This is the first of a series of short write-ups highlighting my top ten tips for a given health habit or exercise. Consistency is the first topic because it’s the most important aspect of your workouts: not the type, timing or intensity. Without consistency, any progress will be limited at best, and non-existent at worst. So if you are serious about getting meaningfully fitter or developing muscle and strength, you must first work on your consistency over LONG periods of time (eg. a year). So here is my top ten list of things you should do to help you become more consistent with exercise:
Schedule your workouts. Put them into your calendar and treat them like appointments. Schedule them as recurring events - not just one-offs or week-by-week. When you look ahead to your week, you are permitted to reschedule if necessary but not to skip them.
Do timed workouts. Decide how much time you have for your workouts and just do as much as you can within that time frame, as opposed to worrying about workout completion (as written on spreadsheet).
Be realistic about your time. Don’t schedule workouts for an hour in the early morning if you have never been a morning person. If you never know what time you will finish work, avoid scheduling workouts at the end of the work day. You need to be honest with yourself about what will work best for you.
Don’t make the workouts conditional. You will always take the opt-out if you believe you have one. “I will do my workout, IF I wake up early”. “I’ll do my workout IF I finish work on time”. “I’ll do my workout IF the weather permits”. These are statements that reinforce the optional nature of your workouts. They cannot be optional in your mind. Replace these statements with “I will workout when I’m done work” “I will workout once the kids are in bed”.
Establish more routine to the workouts. Having workouts appear in random places where you can jam them in is not likely to help you stick to them. Decision fatigue and incidental events are more likely to derail you if this is how you “plan” to workout. If you know you always work out before work, then you will eventually stop thinking you can do other things during that time. If you don’t have any routines, your brain is constantly working hard to fit your exercise time into your day. This adds to decision fatigue.
Try morning workouts to every extent possible. End of day workouts tend to be much more problematic: psychologically it lowers the priority of exercise because you are telling yourself it’s only something you have time to do once everything else in your day is done, and secondly, everyone runs out of time during the day and the last things on your to-do list are always the least likely to get done. Morning workouts leave much less room for distraction. If you can make them work for you, do it.
Make your workouts more convenient. This is part of being realistic about what works for you, for right now in your life. Don’t plan to get to the gym if getting there is intimidating and time-consuming. Try something at home for a while instead. Or choose a gym that is en route to work. Use the gym AT work if there is one. Workout with a band and no equipment if that is what will get this done.
Meet a friend. If possible, exercise with a partner who will help you stay accountable.
Track your progress. Keep some kind of training log. Even if it’s just tick marks on a calendar. Seeing evidence of success is very motivating.
Stop the emotional overlay. Your feelings about getting the workout done are to be ignored. Full stop. When you start the business of “I’m too tired” “I’m too busy”, “It is so hard”, “I don’t want to push today”, it’s useless disruptive thinking. Just get on with the task and ignore the inner voice. You never regret a workout.