Tag: how to get motivated to exercise

Have you ever struggled with the motivation to exercise? You are not alone! I was reading this amazing article that explored a couple of research based studies on how you can change your behaviour so that you can be motivated to exercise. It resonated with me so much so I decided to share my favourites in this video.

Let’s dive straight in.

Habits Beat Motivation

Motivation is so fickle. You can be on it one day, and the next day it’s gone! So you really can’t rely solely on your motivation. What you really want to do is create habits and processes that you can rely upon.

Change Your Environment

I don’t know about you, but I am a very visual person, and there was research to suggest that if you can bring in some visual cues around your environment, then it will help you to actually get up and exercise and do what you need to do. Maybe you’re planning a 30 minute workout. You could lay out your workout gear for the gym the night before, or if you’re working out at home, maybe you could change into your workout clothes in the morning, ready for when it is time to exercise. Perhaps you exercise on a machine at home that is normally folded up and tucked away until needed. So you could bring out the machine and unfold the night before, in readiness for your exercise time. Little prompts like this in your environment could really help you get into your new habit.

Just 10 minutes!

Love this! Basically, you’re telling yourself, ‘I’m only going to go for 10 minutes’. The logic behind that is you get to do your exercise and you start to do a little bit, and it just helps you to become more regular. Sometimes, maybe, if you’re there doing 5 – 10 minutes, you start to enjoy it and you could start to get into a groove, and maybe 10 minutes becomes 15 minutes, maybe you’re still going at 18 minutes! But the point is, 10 minutes is better than NO minutes! So don’t put too much pressure on yourself, and it doesn’t have to be all perfect to begin with, just keep turning up, even if it just starts with doing a little bit.

Enjoy Yourself!

Exercising doesn’t have to be a chore. This research looked at how when people had the perception that there was going to be a fun element to the exercise, they were much more likely to go, and go again. So think about what type of exercises you are choosing to do. Is it something that you can enjoy, or that you can have fun with? Don’t be so strict on yourself. If you hate going to the gym…..well there is more than one way to exercise! Think of what you can do and how you can up the fun-factor, and it will help you to get more motivated.

Your Strong ‘WHY’

If you can align the reason why you’ve decided to start this new exercise, with your priority values and what is really important to you, then the likelihood of you turning up to do this exercise is greatly increased. So maybe, you want to be able to enjoy more adventures with your family and to do that, you want to be in good health, fit, flexible and agile …….well that’s why you’ll be showing up, especially on those days when you don’t want to exercise! So you know WHY you’re doing this. It might be that you’re looking at your body, and you see your body as this gift you’ve been given, as a temple, and you take your responsibilities about maintaining the health of that body very seriously. There you go, connect with that, and that is your WHY and reason for turning up to exercise.

I’m excited for you to move forward with exercise that is right for you and I’d love to hear how you get on.

Comment down below and let me know what was your number one takeaway.