All of us are guilty of this at least once in our lifetime. Everyone has missed their workouts. We start with a lot of excitement. The motivation and hope to find success are high every time we start. Untill, we miss a couple of workouts here and there. Which becomes a regular practice till you finally quit. All this can play out, typically in either one or a combination of these two scenarios
Scenario 1
You start very strong and excited and go crush your first workout. The next day you are in pain due to the previous workout. You still go crush your second workout. Then there is more pain. You keep pushing for a couple of days more till the initial excitement and motivation starts to diminish.
Your commitment is still strong. In spite of having no motivation, you drag yourself out of bed to go get your workout done. Now you are miserable. You don’t want to get out of the bed and you feel you are betraying yourself again.
And then it happens. You blissfully go back to sleep and miss your workout. It doesn’t feel so bad anymore. In fact you feel liberated. I will get right back tomorrow, you say to yourself.
The next day, it’s terribly difficult to wake up. You get up, still in the bed, there is a lot of self talk going on in your head. May be I should go back to sleep, it’s not really that bad to miss workouts 2 times in a row, I would have been much easy only if I had a good sleep, blah blah blah.
15 min later, you are sound asleep!!
This happen a couple of days every week. Again and Again till you finally quit.
Scenario 2
You are really serious. You start off very well. Couple of weeks pass, you are still working out regularly. Even though motivation is not as high as the beginning, you still enjoy working out.
But, you wish only if the results start showing fast. You hope, there will be no obstacles your way and you will finally be able to see your six-packs this time around.
Life just happens, things come up un-announced. You are forced to miss a workout to deal with an unexpected personal work. Within a week, you miss couple more workouts due to travel. And then there is something else after couple of weeks.
There is always a constant pressure to manage time between workouts and personal stuff to official work. Missing workouts become common, ultimately leading to loss of interest and quitting.
This is just we being human. It can happen to anyone and everyone. I have done this several times myself. Fortunately, for the past couple of years, I have successfully overcome this. I found ways to never miss my workouts except for a couple of unavoidable situations like injury, travel and one workout when I had by boy.
So, directly out of my personal experience, here are five strategies to never miss a workout-
1.Set right expectations
The No.1 reason for loss of motivation and excitement it this. Not having your expectations in place. There is no magic. Results are guaranteed only with consistent long effort.
Working out is not suppose to be an easy-peasy-piece-of-cake. The whole point of exercise is to put your body through a controlled stress. Pain and discomfort is definitely expected.
Every time you exercise, your body breaks a little under stress. It repairs and rebuilds itself a little stronger and bigger with enough rest and fuel to recover. For that reason, your workout should not be so extremely hard that is cannot recover well in time for the next one.
Make your exercise just hard enough to push you out of comfort. The body should feel stressed to switch to recovery mode. Moreover, proper workouts will always leave you feeling good. No matter, how you feel before or during the workout.
2.Make it easy
We, the people of Earth are wired to seek comfort. Exercise is an uncomfortable activity. This is a perfect combination for a huge internal resistance. As a result, we always manage to find reasons to not workout.
This internal resistance can only be minimized, if you choose a type of exercise which you enjoy the most. But any exercise will still be uncomfortable. So it is also in our best interest to minimize as many external resistances as possible. You can get very creative with this but here are bunch of effective ways to give you an idea-
- Work out at closest and most convenient place and time to which you most likely will stick.
- Early morning is a bad time for many. Getting out of the bed is a very big added resistance. Working out later in the day may be better for such people.
- Scheduling an exact time for workout drastically improves the chances of you making it. Say you fix 6:30pm in the evening instead of just after work. You will more likely finish work before 6:30pm.
- Keeping your exercise gear like clothes, shoes, water bottle and stuff ready to go on the previous night.
- Finding an exercise spot on the way from work removes the resistance of going home before workout.
3.Choose Flexibility
“Exercise Daily”- these words are so deeply ingrained in our mind that we believe there is no other way. People feel they always have to commit to working out daily.
While it is possible to do that, most people fail trying. Smarter people already know they cannot, so they don’t simply bother trying.
Good news is, we can make a lot of progress by working out just 3 days a week. The workouts can be slightly longer or they may make you exercise less. But it is definitely way better than no workout at all.
Importantly, it gives you a lot of flexibility. You may miss 1 or 2 days and still manage to finish the workouts for the week. There are 4 free days in the week to your rescue.
It also takes away the pressure of not having enough time for other important things in life. I made a switch from 5-days a week to 3-days a week workout program when I had my son. For almost 2 years since then, I have made good progress while managing time for all important aspects of life.
4.Don’t Exercise
I have tried exercising dozens of times earlier. Every single time, I failed. Only for the last couple of years. I stuck with it and managed to never miss a workout!!
Confused already? Let me clarify.
Exercising is just a physical activity you keep doing without any specific goal. Running 20 min daily is an example of exercising. Which is why you will get bored or lose interest and finally quit.
But, what I started this time around, was to train. I trained to lose fat initially. Now I train to get stronger while building muscle. So what’s the difference?
Training is always associated with a specific goal. Your training includes performing exercises and adding variations with time with a specific goal in mind. It’s something like, running daily with an aim to participate in a marathon on a predetermined day. There is lot more to it than just running.
Training with specific goal forces you to be structured and keep track of your progress with time. It is more engaging and works as a powerful motivation.
Training also means you need to learn and understand a lot of things to help you. There are lot of resources online- youtube channels, blogs etc. But the best place to start is to read books. With books, you get all the relevant data meaningfully packaged in one place.
The book I recommend for general fitness is the one which I started with. It is Bigger Leaner stronger for men and Thinner leaner stronger for women.
5.Take Breaks
Here is a big one to stop you boredom. If you keep training without breaks, you will get bored. Not only that, you may also get over trained and results may stall.
That’s way it’s a part of having a proper training program. Any good training program will have you take a break periodically. Typically every 4-8 weeks.
Taking a week off, gives some extra recovery time for the body to not get over trained. It further helps you to concentrate on pending personal work. Also a good opportunity to plan for trips and travel. That way you can come back feeling fresh and energetic to attack the next cycle of training.