Welcome back to this week’s edition of 2-Minute Tuesdays. One thing that happens at the start of every single year is people decide they want to start exercising. One thing that we find often lacks with that excitement to start exercising is the discipline to exercise consistently. Today we want to give you some tips of things you can do in your daily life to start improving your discipline with exercise to make sure you are able to exercise consistently.
1) Set Goals That Are Actionable
The first tip to improve your exercise discipline is to set exercise goals that are actionable. What we mean by this is to set goals that require you to take action in order to achieve them, not ones that are based on a specific outcome. For example, set the goal of going to the gym three times per week for 20 minutes for four weeks instead of the goal to lose five pounds in four weeks. Losing five pounds can come as a result of the action of going to the gym, and it can also come as the result of other actions. If you want to get more disciplined with your exercise, set goals that will force you to take the action of exercising, not ones that are the potential result of exercising.
Action Step: Make sure your goals are time-bound, too. For example, give yourself the goal of “exercising three times per week for one month”. This means you can’t wait until the very last week of the month to get all of your workouts in; you need to be consistent with them throughout the entire month.
Related: How to take your home workouts to the next level
2) Schedule Your Exercise
Our second tip to improve your exercise discipline is to schedule your exercise. We always hear that people don’t have enough time to exercise, when in reality they have just as much time as everybody else. One of the biggest differences between people who exercise consistently and those who do not is those who exercise consistently schedule their workouts with themself. Your exercise needs to be prioritized in your schedule. You are important enough and your health is important enough to do that.
Action Step: No excuses! Take out your calendar and find three times this week where you can get at least twenty minutes of exercise in. It may be early in the morning. It may be late at night. It may be over lunch. Put your workouts in your schedule and honor that appointment with yourself. You are worth it!
Related: On a time budget? Exercise with these tips!
3) Find Others To Keep You Accountable
The third tip we have to improve your exercise discipline is to find another person or a group of people to help keep you accountable. This can be a workout buddy, a running group, or a personal trainer. Whoever your person of choice is, having somebody else to report to for your workouts will help increase your discipline with exercise dramatically!
Action Step: Find a friend, a group of people on MeetUp.com, or a studio that offers group classes to get you started with having somebody to hold you accountable. And if you would like to schedule with one of our personal trainers, you may do so here.