It happens to all of us.
We plan our workouts for the week, fully intending on completing all of them.
We have the time carved out in our schedule. But sometimes, when the time comes to actually do the workout…
It just sounds so… hard.
Sound familiar?
Maybe you’ve had a tough, stressful day.
Maybe you’re still sore from the previous day’s workout.
Or maybe you didn’t get enough sleep the night before.
Whatever the reason, there’s something in you that is completely resistant to the workout ahead of you.
So what can you do about it?
How can you push past that resistance and complete your workout?
There are many different ways to approach it, but here are the steps I follow:
1. Pick a set time.
Setting a time you’re going to work out takes the guesswork out of it.
Your mind will treat it the same as any appointment, and because it’s already a set item in your schedule, you won’t try and procrastinate the same as you would if you would if you gave yourself a larger time frame to complete it (such as the entire day or morning).
2. Look at the time as a whole.
Rather than thinking of your workout as a big, long, scary workout, consider the actual amount of time it will take to complete.
If you know you’re only going to be exercising for a total of 12 to 15 minutes (like the workouts we do here on the site), working out suddenly gets a whole lot less overwhelming.
Think about it. You can do Anything for 12 minutes!
And when you look at it like that, 12 minutes of exercise is probably a lot more enjoyable than some of the other things you have to do in your day (boring meetings, waiting in line, laundry, dealing with an angry family member/coworker/stranger…).
Really, it’s only 12 minutes.
3. Break it down further.
Sometimes, even 12 or 15 minutes sounds unbearable. When this is the case, go ahead and break your workout down even further.
So, if you’re about to do a 12 minute workout with 18 intervals of 10 and 30 seconds and 6 different exercises, try thinking of it like this:
You’re only working for 30 seconds at a time. 30 seconds is nothing! You can hold your breathe for (hopefully) longer than that.
Plus, since there are six different exercises, you’re actually only doing each exercise for a total of 90 seconds, broken into 3 different time periods.
That’s just 90 seconds of each exercise. And it’s not even consecutive.
You can do that, can’t you?
I know you can.
So what are you waiting for? Go start your workout right now. You no longer have any excuse not to.
Tip: this strategy works with anything in life, not just fitness. Give it a try!