As I write this, it’s the 20th of January, and I’ve been to the gym (or working out) for 19 days straight (I knew I wasnt going to the gym on new years day). This is surely the longest tracked streak, and probably up there in terms of length in all my bouts of going to the gym. I’ve found that the best time for me to go the gym is in the morning before work. Admittedly, it’s not always easy to go to the gym at this hour but I make it happen on about 5-6 days during the week. I usually give myself one day off during the week in the morning, and I run that afternoon.
The one thing that I’ve been noticing is that it sucks getting up all the time. I’m not talking about waking up, I’m talking about taking the action of getting out of bed. We all know that getting out of bed is probably the worst thing ever - and even more so when the weather is cold. After my battles in december with myself on getting out of bed (which I mostly lost) I gave my workouts more thought around christmas time and I knew that I had to figure out some sort of gimmick to get myself out of bed, because once I’m out of bed and ambulatory, I do just fine and make it to the gym.
I settled on the easy workout. I do a series of 4 workouts, two muscle groups at a time except for one day where I just do one. The workout where I just do 1 muscle group rotates, but the workout is always the same: legs. This workout takes way less time and isn’t nearly as rigorous as the rest of my workouts. So whenever I wake up and I’m having a lot of trouble making it out of bed, I just tell myself that I’m doing the legs workout that day, and after a minute or two I drag myself out of bed. Even though I may not actually end up doing the easy work out, getting out of bed is all that matters (for me). Once I’m out of bed, I’ll grab one of the scraps of paper I’ve got my workouts written on and head off to the gym, and it usually isnt the easy workout, I usually save that for the end of the week. I dont want to “burn” it on a monday.
The thing is, once I can get out of bed, I know that I could get to the gym, so I’ve learned to leverage that. I know that once I’m out of bed, I can get to the gym, so I’ve been trying to trick myself every day that I dont want to get out of bed (this is about 1 of every 3 days). I tell myself that I’m doing the easy workout (wether I am not) and that helps me get out of bed and head to the gym.
Readers: Do you use special tricks to get yourself to workout, or do you just try and force yourself all the time? Do you think something like that would work for you? If so, what habit(s) could you leverage (like my not getting back in bed after I get up) to make this goal a success?
My wife controls the alarm clock. That means that when it goes off at 5am, if I told get out of bed to turn it off, I will wake her up. She typically gets up at 6:30, so I force myself to get out of bed and turn the alarm clock off. This means I’m already out of bed. I also have a timed coffee pot, which means that I know I have a fresh pot of coffee waiting for me when I get up at 5am. It is generally enough motivation.
I like the timed coffee pot, even though I dont drink coffee, it’s probably nice to know you’ve got something to look forward to.
I’ve set a goal of working out three times a week which I have done so far this year (and I did it this morning so that’s a good start to this week). I have an exercise bike that I use and my newest strategy is to watch a movie while I exercise. So far, that seems to be paying off and hopefully it will last until spring when I can start walking and riding my bike through the neighborhood.
that’s a pretty awesome strategy beagle! Great that you’ve set a goal that it totally reachable and you can even enjoy yourself while doing it!