Don’t Want to Skip WORKOUTS: Follow These 10 Suggestions!

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Exercising is one of the mandatory things for a healthy lifestyle. However, eight out of ten people who’re in the middle of their 20s could’ve experienced this scenario, they tend to start a workout routine and did that perfectly for the first three days and then gave up. This is caused by a lack of motivation and interest. According to the European Journal of Social

In psychology, when you want to start a new habit, it takes 66 Days to become automatic. So those three days can’t do anything to form a workout routine. In this blog let’s see how to motivate yourself to stick to a workout routine.

What weighs you down from doing Workout?

Whenever you want to start a workout routine you might face some obstacles. Because exercising is directly connected to willpower. Willpower is nothing but the ability to resist short-term gratification for long-term goals. Those obstacles called barriers plus a lack of willpower can lead you to make more excuses for not doing a workout. Check out the barriers,

• Having no time: because of the bad time schedule.
• Laziness: because of not being involved in activities.
• Lack of confidence and motivation: Because of no self-awareness.

Now let’s see how to demolish those barriers and commit yourself to Workout. IMPORTANTLY you have to follow each tip until you make those automated activities. Which means 66 DAYS.

#1 Start Your Workout Simple

You can’t suddenly lift 80Kg weights in one day. Some people are doing this mistake. When they start their gym session for the first time, they’ll begin to lift so much weight. This causes severe muscle injuries and demotivates you when you couldn’t lift that much weight. Starting simply and gradually increasing the load and repetitions can effectively build muscle in your body and it keeps you motivated and makes you return to workout the next day. If you’re doing home exercises then start by doing these simple exercises for the first week.

• Pushups – 10
• Sit-ups – 10
• Pull-ups – 10
• Squats – 15
• Plank – 40 seconds

After a week, increase the repetitions and add some weight by hanging a bag on your back with a few books. The ability to complete those exercises can give you the feeling of you’ve achieved something.

#2 Create a Motivation Surrounding

The Sri Lankan majority of students paste their favourite scientist’s picture or favourite quote on their bedroom wall. That’s a kind of motivating themself by consistently looking at those posters. In this manner, you should paste a picture of a bodybuilding idol or a quote that pushes you to workout daily.

In this century every person is having social media profiles. I believe that you too have one. Social media is like a second home for most people. so make your second home’s environment motivate you. Follow some fitness influencers’ pages, watch some exercise videos, and Read about diet plans. Those activities online can stimulate ideas inside you about how to improve your fitness level.

Your personality is influenced by whom you’re hanging out with. Socialize with like-minded people. When you’re having a companion who’s working out regularly then you could automatically go with him. Because his training routine can influence you to workout.

#3 Develop Patience & Increase The Intensity.

Growth needs time and progress. So be patient with getting better. You shouldn’t give up when you have no improvements in your body after doing 10 pushups in one day.

To develop patience, try these activities.

• Practice meditation: Meditating is the most powerful thing to develop patience and focus. It increases the concentration level so that you can focus on the progression instead of the result.
• Do Breathing training after every workout: Breathing can increase the metabolic rate in your body, and it relaxes your body.
• Write a To-Do list every day: By writing, you can reduce the stress caused by the urge to do something.

If you’re bored or it’s easy to do basic exercises, then add some difficulty to those exercises by putting some weights on or increasing the repetition count. New and challenging situations can excite you and lead you to push your limits.

#4 Track Your Progress

It’s really important to keep an eye on your development process. Because you have to authenticate whether your routine is improving something in you or not. To do that trace what you’re doing and how it’s impacting you. For achieving this you don’t need to have any high-tech equipment. It’ll be enough if you have a pen and notebook or You can wear a fitness smartwatch to track your blood pressure, calories you’ve burnt and heart rate. Whatever you’re using, the main goal is to maintain a record of your workout. Here are the tips to track your workout routine:

• Write a journal every day: Journaling about your workout make you realize your mistakes and what you’re doing wrongly. So, at the end of your workout write a journal.
• Take a photo of yourself every week: It can show you how well you’re doing the workout. You’ll be able to differentiate your body’s structure between after and before training.
• Measure your weight: You can sense whether you’re training properly or not by measuring your weight. If you’re doing well, it’ll indicate a raise in your weight. In another way, If you’re trying to reduce weight then it’ll show you a drop when you’ve done your training well.

Tracking your progress can motivate you to workout by making you realize how impactful your workout is.

#5 Listen to MUSIC While Exercising

To enjoy a painful or hardest work, you can do that particular work collaborated with some of your favourite activities. If you’re not enjoying a workout or it’s hard for you, you could add some fun things to your workout such as listening to music. Music can stimulate the part of your brain that is responsible for skeletal muscle movement. So, music can help you to do the workout or exercise with rhythm and coordination.

But be aware of what kind of music are you listening to. Because workouts can be stimulated by hard and pop dance music. If you are listening to a melody or soft music while exercising you might end up sleeping. You can listen to music via your home theatre sound system or through your headphones. But wired earphones may interrupt your workout by hanging and shaking between your arms and body. Wireless Earphones are recommended.

#6 Morning is the Best Time for Movement

In the morning time, your mind and body are refreshed and ready to do any work efficiently. After being in a long rest for the entire night your body is set to make heavy and intensive movements. Also working out in the morning contains an enormous number of benefits. It boosts the energy needed for the entire day. Increases blood flow in your body in order to increase the metabolic rate for energy production. And these actions in your body tend to burn all unwanted fat. Increases inner motivation. morning exercise can give you the feeling of achieving something throughout the whole day. This motivation stimulates you to finish all the work for that day. Helps sleep better. By exercising the blood flow in your body increases and it transfers all the essential materials through the body. This allows every cell to absorb certain chemicals called Hormones released by different organs. Hormones hold the biggest role in sleeping. This increased amount of hormone circulation can improve the quality of your sleep.

#7 Eat Some Healthy Snacks Before the Workout

Diets are an important part of fitness. Because you can workout daily but still you won’t be able to reach that fitness goal when you don’t work on your diet. Consider you want to empty a bucket with water, so you’re taking out the water from that bucket, and at the same time, you’re pouring more water inside the bucket. Then how could you empty that bucket? In that way, you have to reduce the fat you’re intaking to lose unwanted fat faster and gain more muscle. To do that add these things to your meal plan.

• Grains: Chickpea. Oats.
• Green Vegetables: spinach, mushrooms, broccoli, beans
• Fruits: berries, avocado, banana, papaya

Considering Sri Lankan traditional foods like coconut milk curry, it’s containing a high amount of unsaturated fat. But we can’t skip that, Because that’s one of the main courses in our lunch. For the solution, you can avoid coconut milk and use water instead. Some of the foods mentioned in the above list are expensive. So, you can try alternate foods that can be bought in local markets.

#8 Set Goals

Unless you’re having an aim, you won’t be able to maintain focus on your work. Setting fitness goals can push you to workout daily and be consistent. But be aware of how achievable your goals are. Because if you can’t accomplish your goals, you might be demotivated. To set daily fitness goals: Know your fitness status by analyzing your fitness journal. Through that data try to schedule your workout routine and set repetition count. Find your convenient time to workout.

#9 Make Sure You’re Getting Enough Rest

After making heavy movements, your body needs to recover. That’s where rest and relaxing time come in. While sleeping our entire body system starts to heal itself. This healing process requires more time, So you have to give that time to your body. 7 hours of sleep an average human should gain. Benefits of rest:

• You can recover from multiple internal muscle fractures and injuries. It improves your mood and relaxes your brain.
• Stimulate your Endocrine system and releases essential hormones.
• Enhance your mood and reduce stress simultaneously.

#10 Don’t Pass More Than One Day Without Workout

which means you should workout every second day. skipping your training for more than two days can affect your ability to workout and add some difficulties to your body while working out. You will start to feel pain again from the beginning. So that it’s very easy to say “ok let’s skip today”. When it comes to discipline, Consistency is the key. If you broke that consistency you would have to put more effort to get that continuity back. As you know, An activity requires 66 days to become a habit. So don’t stop until you develop that habit and do it unconsciously.

Final Thoughts

Quotes won’t work unless you apply them to your life. You can skip a day’s workout for an acceptable reason like being sick, but skipping for some irresponsible reasons is not appropriate. Sticking to a workout routine is not that much easy as you think. Much willpower and consistency are necessary to achieve it. By sticking along with the above tips you can break a bad habit and convert it into a good one such as exercising. Personalize them for your convenience and achieve your fitness goal!