I have always believed in forming good Diet and exercise habits. In my last post, I talked about Converting Fat to Muscle . This post should serve as a complimentary post and help you in kick starting the exercise habit.
Having lived a life of Laziness, people find it hard to continue their exercising schedule. They start, get unmotivated, stop ….. That is but natural. The main thing here is that you start again.
The Main Problems
So why do most people have trouble making exercise a regular habit? Well, there are probably a number of factors, but here are the main ones as I see it:
1. Lack of motivation. Motivation plays an important role in keeping you going. You have to make a conscious effort to keep up your motivation levels. Keeping an Exercise journal, a log, public pressure , Determination are things which help in Motivating you.
2. Too difficult. The determination and motivation levels tend to decrease over time. Exercising starts to become difficult. Suddenly you do not have time for exercise. The solution is to workout on alternate days. Do not Max out yourself. When you start breathing heavily, stop your workout, rest for 5 minutes and repeat. Start with less number of repeats and increase them as your Muscles begin to strengthen.
3. Too many goals. Focus only on a couple of goals. “I will perform 15 sit ups and 500 skipping jumps by the end of this week” is an example of a good and simple goal.
Solutions to these problems and starting the exercise habit
1) Set one easy, specific, measurable goal. Write that goal down and stick it up on your fridge or a place you visit frequently.
Do not set a difficult goal to start with. Set one that is very easy. Five minutes of running a day. You can do that. Work your way to 10 minutes after a month. Then go to 15 after 2 months.
Stick to this one goal for at least a month. Don’t start up a second goal during that 30-day period. If you do, you are scrapping this goal.
Be specific and break your simple and specific goal into the “what exercise,when,where,length”.
Make your goals measurable. You should be able to say, definitely, whether you hit or miss your goal today. Examples: run for 10 minutes. Walk 1/2 a mile. Do 3 sets of 5 push ups. Each of those has a number that you can shoot for.
2) Log it daily. By logging your daily Exercises, at the month end, you have useful statistics at your hand. You will start to see your progress, and it will motivate you to keep going. And don’t make the log complicated - that will only make you resist doing the log. Just the date, time, and what you did.
3) Report to others. Report to people who can understand what you are doing and trying to achieve. You may report your progress to a family member or maintain an on-line Blog or a forum or through email, or the phone, or just by telling your friends and colleagues what you did this morning.But be sure that they know your goal, and that you are going to report to them, and be sure that they are expecting it every day.
4) Add motivation as needed. The first three steps might be enough for you to get the habit going. But if not, don’t just give up. If you miss two consecutive workouts, you need to look at why, and add a new motivation. Rewards, more public pressure, inspiration, whatever it takes.
~ Sticking to his Exercise Plan, this is Reid ..
Posts related to Simple Steps to Kick Start the Exercise Habit
No related Posts
Enter Your Email Address.