The Number One Reason, Most People, Have Quit The Gym By Now

It’s oh-so-predictable

Harrison Jaime
ILLUMINATION
3 min readFeb 14, 2023

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Photo by Jackson Simmer on Unsplash

We’re now over 10% of the way through 2023. How does that make you feel?

Time waits for nobody. And it also doesn’t wait for all those New Year resolutions people make to begin dropping off like flies.

One of the big ones most people quit by now is, “I’m gonna stick at the gym this year.”

As a former personal trainer who worked in the fitness industry for the best part of 5 years, I saw this trend happen time and time again.

Gyms are going from full capacity in January as this new wave of resoluters swarm in, to being almost deserted in February.

Here’s the thing: making resolutions and plastering “New Year, New Me” on your social media (nobody cares-sorry) isn’t going to take you far without one critical piece of the puzzle: putting in the hard work to change everyday habits.

And getting your butt active this year is no exception.

Yep, it comes down to that tried and tested phrase-nothing in life comes easy.

Picture this: you’ve spent the last year of your life lounging around eating Doritos and binging on YOU for the 3rd time.

So you decide that for this year, you’re going to finally join the gym, and it will be different this time! You’re going to stick with it and give your lazy ass the kick it needs.

Then a few weeks later, after throwing yourself full-on into this new, totally-beyond-your-current-capabilities routine you pulled from Men’s or Women’s Health…you give up.

The problem is, you haven’t trained your body to deal with situations that require resilience, consistency and dedication.

You’ve been stuck inside your comfort bubble for the last year, and your body and mind will do everything they can to stop you from pursuing these new activities you’ve forced upon them.

Not only that, you haven’t taken the time to fully understand what’s required to reach your new Health goal and what your optimal path to getting there may look like.

“Just do it” is great, but it’s incomplete advice.

To keep up the get-in-shape habit and not be one of those people who cancel their gym membership by March because they only went three times in 2 months, you have to train your resilience muscle!

Going all-guns-blazing without a plan of action and an untrained resilience muscle will lead to quitting 95% of the time.

Start by running 3k slowly and be honest about where your fitness levels are.

Learn proper form and technique and build up your stabilizer muscles before hammering the weights.

Make smaller changes to your diet and adapt according to your progress rather than slashing your daily calories in half from day one.

The more you expose yourself to these smaller challenges at first, the more well-equipped you’ll be to handle the bigger one’s later on.

Your new fitness routine will embed itself as a habit, and eventually, you’ll never look back.

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Harrison Jaime
ILLUMINATION

Let’s experience this beautiful struggle together, bit by bit. I write about life lessons and wholesome experiences to uplift, energise and encourage.