by Will Praht
Getting to where you dread going to the gym? It’s now become work or a chore and you can’t break that feeling. Sometimes, even though we know better we can lose our weight loss or fitness goals simply because we are tired of the same old workout. Everyday the same thing becomes a boring routine that no longer stimulates our desire for continued progress. Actually sometimes progress itself contributes because now we can justify to ourselves skipping a workout here or there. The truth is once you start skipping this turns into a bad habit and before you know it your back to where you started when you first began wor
king out.Workouts don’t have to be that way. Try a few of these solutions to breaking the monotony and putting a little life into your workouts. Once you have re-energized your approach to fitness you will be less likely to get bored and much more likely to continue with your fitness plan, because you now enjoy fitness.
Friends Forever
At least at the gym. Don’t take this one for granted. I know you’ve heard it over and over but by incorporating a reliable and good friend into your workout is truly one of the best ways to stay in shape and enjoy your workouts.
Notice however, that I said a reliable friend. Find someone with similar fitness goals who will be punctual and consistent in your preset goals for the two of you. This may not be your best friend (although that would be nice), but a friend who you get along with and share similar workout goals. Who knows, by the time you are through you may be best friends because of the shared experience.
Don’t choose a friend you know has a history of not sticking to their goals, pick one that you can have a dialog with and gently nudge each other toward success. Gently, is the key word here. If you wanted a slave driver you would have hired a trainer with no personality to make you go through their regime. Rather find that person that gives you a competitive boost through the success of each other, and can challenge you on a daily basis, and you them.
Just having a friend as a workout partner often times stirs the competitive nature and propels us to perform at higher levels just to either keep up or impress our friends. (always keep in mind safety issues and never let this competitive nature get out of hand)
This factor in itself can account for more intense and effective workouts.
After the workout you can then share the experience with each other, talk, set new goals and just enjoy each others company.
Track Your Victories
Before starting any workouts set down and develop realistic and achievable goals to accomplish. Buy yourself a journal to track your workouts, so you can go back and forth and chart your progress. Also make notes of how you feel those days and if your trying to lose weight what you ate.
Sometimes as we workout we think our progress has stopped or hit a plateau. Sometimes this is the case and can be remedied through a variation of your workout plan. However most the time this tends to not be the case. Because we see ourselves everyday, our brain doesn’t process the little changes we accomplish. To overcome this obstacle I always suggest that people keep a visual record of their workout program. With today’s digital technology this is private and very helpful. I suggest a monthly photograph or photographs all in the same pose that you can compare against the previous month’s photograph. This will give you a visual of what is really happening with your body and you can pinpoint your success’s and sometimes your slips. Either way it becomes an invaluable tool for accessing the credibility of your workout plan.
I am always amazed how people worry about the starting photograph and how they wouldn’t want anyone to accidentally see it, yet after a few months they are showing everyone their lasted photograph and the before photo in the other hand to show them where they began their journey.
These journals and logs become a incentive in themselves because of the concrete evidence we are generating. Once again our internal system that does not want us to fail often takes over and gets our competitive juices flowing to make our records that much more impressive. Remember that these are your goals and not someone else’s so if you record them wrong you are only cheating yourself. Plus those who tend to distort are those who usually won’t continue their workout program because they know their own numbers are invalid anyway.
Of course a video or photographic journal won’t allow for this self tampering because the camera can only record what it sees, this one of the main reasons, I strongly recommend visual record keeping.
Blinders are for Horses
Workouts are like anything else in your life, in that, the more we are around certain stimulus the more we take it for granted. If you have a favorite food that you don’t get to eat very often you really enjoy it every time you eat it. When that food becomes readily available and we all the sudden make it a staple of our diet, after a short time we are tired of it and don’t appreciate it as much as we used to.
In many ways your workout works the same.If we continually perform the same routine in the same manner on a daily basis it becomes stale, not only mentally, but physically as well.
Our bodies were made to adapt to whatever pressure are put on them by the environment we are in. If we continually perform the same movements in the same order every time we workout our bodies begin to adapt and after awhile our workout seems to plateau. Sometimes it is just a matter of changing the order of our workout to re-invigorate it, other times we may need to add a new wrinkle, such as a new exercise or change the pace of our workout. Add more weight or resistance and do less reps or decrease the weight and do more reps. Whatever it takes to get your muscle memory to start the re-adaption phase.
I personally like to add and subtract different movements from week to week, so as to keep my body in a continuous adaptive state, thus making my muscles work harder because of lack of memory. In the end , through this method I have fooled my body and since it is always adapting I can achieve my goals at a quicker pace that those who continually go through the same paces, day in and day out.
Develop Long Term Memory
After we workout for awhile, as our bodies develop into the shape we want we tend to forget about how bad we had let our bodies get in the first place. Don’t forget the past and don’t forget the long term goal of staying that way once we get there.
Remember how hard it was to adapt your body to the workouts, remember how bad you felt before you began an exercise program, look at the endurance you have now and don’t forget your future goals.
Always challenge yourself. Don’t settle for what you have already achieved. Once you get there reassess your goals and create new ones. Always give yourself new direction for motivation. And to make it even more fun, when you achieve your goals, reward yourself. That’s right part of your goals can be rewards. Such as : Once I have lost x a mount of pounds I will buy that new dress I’ve been looking at. Or, After I can walk the treadmill x amount of time without getting worn out I am going to hike at the botanical gardens since I haven’t had the stamina before.
Notice the goals are stated in a positive format and include the benefit of why you wanted to achieve that goal in the first place. These type of incentives will be positive reinforcement as we move forward in our workout plans.
Success
You can’t beat the benefits of a healthy workout program performed at a competent gym. You benefit both your health and physical well being, not to mention your mental state and the positive feelings that are created as we reshape our bodies.
With the amount of time we are investing in ourselves, we need to do everything we can to create an environment that is both energetic in nature and fun.
If you feel your workouts are a burden, step back and re-access the situation and be honest with your answers to yourself.
Try some of the ideas above and get creative with your own ideas. Take the negative out your workout, accentuate the positive and see what a difference it can make.
