Let’s paint a familiar picture for you. When you first signed up for your gym membership you were pumped! You were so excited and looking forward to your healthy new lifestyle. You had committed to working out 3 days a week and going for walks on your off days. But then your job, kids, housework and life got in the way and you suddenly found yourself skipping the gym to spend an extra hour relaxing on the couch at the end of the day. Winter rolled around and it got harder and harder to get out of bed. We get it – we’ve all been there. It’s hard to stay motivated all time and sometimes it comes and goes in waves. So here are our top 5 tips for staying motivated and committed to your workouts, so that they stay at the top of your list of things that need to get done in the day.
Research tells us that people who work out with a partner enjoy exercising more than those who fly solo. It therefore makes sense that those who enjoy exercise more, are more likely to stick to it. Having more fun in the gym is not the only benefit to exercising together though. Having a workout partner keeps you more accountable; you’re less likely to bail on that 6am workout if it means you’ll be standing someone up. You push yourself harder when you’re at the gym with someone else – as human beings we are competitive by nature and we don’t want our gym buddy to think we are slacking off. Furthermore, if you think they are better than you at something, you are more likely to push harder in order to just to keep up! Finally, you will have a second set of eyes on you that can give you a different perspective than the mirror. They can give you technique pointers and help you maintain good form so that you stay free from injury and can keep continuing to hit the gym together.
Albert Einstein said, ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results’. Just going through the motions is a sure fire way to not only see your results plateau, but to lose some serious motivation. If you’ve been doing the same workout program week in and week out for months, it might be time to try something new and shake things up. This could be in the form of a new program (just book in with one of our trainers and they will get you on track!), upping your weights if they are no longer challenging you, trying out a new class, adding in some HIIT training or doing some one-on-one sessions with a personal trainer in order to push a little harder and learn some new things. Switching things up can kick start your mojo back to where it was when you first embarked on your fitness journey!
We’ve heard it time and time again: ‘I’ve joined the gym because I want to lose weight and tone up’. While it’s essential to have goals in place, having only appearance based goals might actually be slowing your progress and here’s why: sustainable, long-term changes in our body shape can be SLOW! Not seeing the results you desire as quickly as you had hoped can be a huge motivation killer, and leads to a lot of people dropping off from regular exercise, or even giving up altogether. Performance-based goals are about what your body can do, rather than what it looks like. For example, ‘I want to run a 5k’ or ‘I want to be able to do a push-up on my toes’. And the best part? Performance-based goals are much faster. You can generally see some sort of improvement in your fitness, strength or mobility week-to-week or even session-to-session, and there is no better feeling than being able to do that thing you couldn’t last week. Not only do performance-based goals keep you motivated to show up to the gym but they also help you to push that bit harder once you get there. This is why it’s great to set both types of goals, because both appearance and performance goals go hand in hand; if you’re continually challenging yourself during your sessions to lift heavier or run faster, your body will adapt to these challenges you will see the physical changes more easily.
All you have to do is show up – the rest is pretty much taken care of! The instructor plans the class, coaches you through the movements and motivates you to do your best, so you don’t even have to think about what to do that day. You also have the added benefit of having someone watch you and correct you when needed throughout your entire workout, so you reduce your risk of injury and can become more confident in your abilities. A group fitness class generally lasts for 30-60 minutes, so even if you are time poor you know that all you have to do is commit to showing up on time and you will get in your full workout and know exactly when you’ll be done. A class environment is full of other like-minded people on the same journey as you, so you can make friends that will give you motivation and support, and keep you accountable to coming back next session. Most people are more likely to work harder as part of a group than when working out alone; even though a group fitness class is a judgement free zone, nobody wants to be the slowest in the group, so whether we are aware of it or not we generally tend to push that little bit harder.
When it comes to health, fitness and fat loss, we can be our own harshest critics. What we need to remember that results come from consistency over time. Going to the gym once won’t build us the physique of our dreams, just as skipping one gym session won’t take away our hard earned progress. It is the habits that we implement and carry out on a daily basis that win out and determine how we look, feel and perform. When we think we have messed up, is when we can start to lose our momentum and motivation and this is the part where many of us beat ourselves up and think the rest of our week is ‘ruined’. So you missed a gym session – so what? Call today a rest day and get back in there tomorrow. Don’t dwell on the one session you missed because in the grand scheme of things, one session is nothing. Think about how much better and refreshed you will feel tomorrow after a recovery day today!
