How I Trained Myself to Stick to My Workout Routine

By now, most of us have tried working out, whether at home or in the gym. We are also all aware that staying committed and consistent can be challenging.

Exercising is tricky for our brain because it’s always after immediate results contrary to the exercise’s nature. Any exercise’s aftermath is subtle and gradual.

My relationship with working out has been rocky and turbulent, but I’ve familiarized my brain with the idea of being more athletic.

My major problem with exercising is my mindset on exercising in general.

For the longest time, I believed working out was for a summer body; any other reason was a pretense.

After three years of an on/off relationship with exercising, I decided to commit long-term.

Here are some ways I utilized to train myself to remain consistent:

• Brainwashing Myself

Just like with any new relationship, my mentality around exercising needed to change drastically.

I wrote down all my beliefs surrounding working out and categorized them into viable and futile habits.

This list helped me have a benchmark for the new standards I was required to establish.

I began reinforcing the workable habits and repealing the futile ones to work in my favor.

Through this method, I devised a daily mantra to help during lazy days:

“I’m a healthy being; I never miss a workout.”

The mantra has transformed my mindset on exercising and reinforced being athletic into my identity.

Brainwashing one’s brain can be challenging and requires an immediate reward, in which I used habit stacking.

Habit stacking is pairing two or more habits of opposite results together. One of the habits should have an immediate reward to motivate the occurrence of the other.

• Starting Small

I curated a workout routine where I combined yoga practices and full body workouts.

When I began working out, I started with minimal exercises, increasing them as I went along.

I kicked off my first week with two workouts in yoga poses and body workouts each.

Every week, I add to both the body workouts and the yoga practices, and the results have been transformational.

Starting small has helped me build motivation and endurance because it doesn’t feel like work compared to before.

• Rewarding My Working out

Waiting for exercising to pay off can be a dreadful experience.

Our brains’ design prioritizes activities of immediate gratification, making workouts a challenging chore for us.

Giving myself a treat after my exercise sessions has motivated my brain to look forward to the drill.

The reward is to trick the brain into easing the friction of working out with a pleasurably aftermath.

In conclusion the above three have been the most feasible strategies for a committed relationship with exercise.

They have yielded transformational results mentally, emotionally, and physically.

I’m still going strong on this journey with a vision of staying committed long-term.

Thank you for reading XOXO!