How to Make Exercise Last

Written by Scott Young - 21 Comments
Categories: health and fitness

hand standIt’s time to buy a new calendar and start another year. That also means it’s New Year’s Resolution time, as the gyms flood with eager people trying to shed the holiday pounds and make up for their inactivity in 2007. Unfortunately, most of these people will barely make it through January before sliding back into the couch.

If you’ve decided to start exercising more regularly this year, congratulations. You’ve made a choice that will give you more energy, add years to your life and get you ready for going to the beach in the summer. The only problem is how can you ensure that this commitment to exercise lasts?

For the past two years I’ve been exercising 5-6 days per week with few exceptions. But this wasn’t always the case. It took me four tries to start exercising out of nothing, with the first three sliding back into old habits after a month or two of concentrated effort. Making the switch between willing myself to work out and having it happen automatically wasn’t easy, but I’d like to share some of my experiences with you.

Exercise is a Habit

The first step to ensuring a commitment to exercise lasts is recognizing it as a habit. Exercise just like the foods you eat, clothes you wear and how you wake up each morning are all programmed into your subconscious. If you aren’t exercising without effort it is because going to the gym isn’t habitual.

The best method I’ve encountered to make something into a habit is the 30-Day Trial method popularized by Steve Pavlina. The basic idea is that you exercise every day, for the next thirty days. After this month-long conditioning period, exercise should be a habit.

Enjoying Exercise

Unfortunately, if sticking to exercise for a month were the only answer to keeping the exercise commitment, there wouldn’t be any resolutions broken in February. Other factors influence whether your habits stick and one of the most important is how much you enjoy exercising.

If you hate going to the gym, you aren’t going to go without a lot of force. If you are in this situation, you have two options:

  1. Enjoy your chosen form of exercise more.
  2. Pick a different form of exercise you enjoy more.

Oddly enough accomplishing these two aims isn’t that difficult. Except most people get so caught up in having enough “willpower” that they neglect to structure their workout in a way that they actually enjoy it. I enjoy going to the gym, listening to music and trying to increase the amount I can lift or distance I can run. This enjoyment wasn’t immediate, but from a slow process of structuring exercise to work for me.

Find the Time

The next major killer of exercise commitments is a lack of time. I hear this excuse all the time from people who claim to be to busy to head to the gym. As someone who is running a business part-time, attending school full-time, running a Toastmasters club and writing a book, I still manage to squeeze in my 40-60 minutes each day.

The problem usually isn’t time. Feeling to busy to go to the gym is usually a consequence of either:

  1. Not enjoying exercising enough.
  2. Not having exercise conditioned strongly as a habit.

The best way to make sure that busyness doesn’t end your resolution is to ensure time doesn’t become an excuse. Here are some ways you can make sure time doesn’t become a stumbling block on the road to fitness:

  • Morning exercise. Wake up a half-hour earlier and get in a quick morning jog or workout.
  • Exercise at home. Fancy exercise equipment isn’t necessary for doing a few sit-ups, push-ups, crunches and stretches. A short twenty minute workout with no commute is still better than nothing.
  • Schedule it first. Place exercise as a priority. If you believe exercise is important not only for your health, but your energy levels for working, then you will place it before other activities of the day crowd it out.

Watch Out for the Curse of the Scale

Another reason for quitting is a lack of motivation. If you’ve been at the gym for three weeks and still aren’t seeing much in the way of improvement, you might feel tempted to ditch exercise entirely. Although exercise doesn’t suffer as much from the plateau effect that dieting can create, your body will often stall at specific weight points, even if you are becoming healthier.

Woody Allen once said that, “Half of life is just showing up.” Focusing on your health and showing up to exercise is more important than whether the weight is immediately melting away. Habits first, results later.
Once you build a habit, try measuring your fitness as this is more likely to improve steadily once you start going to the gym regularly. How long can you run for? How much can you lift? How many sit-ups, push-ups or chin-ups can you do?

Put Your Signature on It

The final step to a lasting commitment is to put it in writing and add your signature to it. Committing for thirty days in writing and adding your autograph will make it far harder to turn back if things get more difficult. If you want even more leverage, tell a friend about your commitment and give them a hundred dollars on the expectation that they will pay you back only if you make it thirty days.

  • Peter

    RE: “The Curse of the Scale” – Its also worth pointing out that muscle is more dense than body fat. So the net effect early on in starting to exercise is that you may initialy gain a little weight as your body first starts to convert fat to muscle.

    And if your *realy* can’t find the time I suggest checking out the book “Total Fitness in 30 Minutes a Week” by Laurence E. Moorehouse and Leonard Cross (ISBN 0583125840) I think its out of print but amazon seems to list plenty of used & new. You only need to commit to 10 mintes 3 times a week. Which is enough to gain and maintain a reasonably healthy fitness level.

  • http://www.varsityblah.com/about Eugene (Editor, Varsity Blah)

    Great article, Scott. My approach is to find reasons first and methods second. Anthony Robbins often talks about “why” coming before “how”.

    I wrote about it recently in terms of my health: “My reasons for living a healthy lifestyle are simple. I want to look as good on the outside as I feel on the inside. Keeping that in mind is the reason I’m able to exercise regularly, even on days I’d much rather stay cuddled up in bed. It’s also the reason I’m able to avoid all those tempting chocolate bars at the supermarket checkout, as much as is humanly possible!”

    (Extract from “Work in Progress”)

  • http://www.pickthebrain.com John

    This is certainly a timely post for me. It seems like every winter, once the weather turns cold and it’s not fun to be outside anymore my exercise habit starts to deteriorate.

    I’ll take some of these points to heart and try a 30-day trial.

  • http://www.iwillchangeyourlife.com Peter

    My motivation to exercise definitely gets challenged in the Winter. This week I started to “find time” to exercise by running in the morning (as you suggest). If you can exercise in the morning it just leaves you feeling great for the rest of the day.

  • https://www.sethigherstandards.com Ravi

    I am a firm believer in using social pressure to create positive change. It works in business/corporate environments and projects. It also definitely works for personal achievement and growth related endeavors.

    Get committed to your goal to exercise, pick something compelling that is going to keep you motivated (e.g. running your first 10k, doing 60 days of yoga in a row, exercising for 30 days) and tell it to as many people as you can. Better yet….blog about it!

    The important thing is, it will not just motivate the person with the goal, it will also motivate the people you share the goal with to make positive change for themselves. It’s a gift you can give others, that also helps you. Who could ask for anything more?

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  • http://roacc.wordpress.com The Crazy Colombian

    One thing you forgot to mention in ‘Curse of the scale’ is the powerful impact of maintaining an exercise blog, and record not only the time and type of exercise you did, but also *the energy level you felt throughout the day*. If you combine this with a log of your energy levels the week or 2 before you started exercising, you will get very quick feedback that illustrates the impact exercise can have.

    I have an article on my blog called “Wise advise from Jack Lalanne: Stop being so tired” that discusses the effect of exercise in your energy levels. For those of you who don’t know, Jack Lalanne was an extremely fit guy who had his own TV show in the days of Black & White TV. There’s a small video from one of his shows in my post where he covers three things you can do to increase your energy levels. (You can find my blog entry at
    http://roacc.wordpress.com/2008/01/08/wise-advise-from-jack-lalanne-stop-being-so-tired/)

    Keep up your great writing,

    The crazy colombian

  • http://www.weightlossworries.com Sara Lynn

    I absolutely love this post! Being a weightloss coach myself I am forever suggesting to clients that they plan out their approach to weight loss and exercise after realizing the reasons they want to lose weight. I then ask them to set mini goals that they can actually KEEP. And MOST important and exactly WHAT you said is that exercise is a HABIT…which is why you must find an activity you enjoy! Great stuff…keep it up, Sara Lynn

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  • http://www.liveloaded.com Jason

    Great post, but I feel it’s important to point out that the best way to actually stick with an exercise plan is to “reprogram” your mind to enjoy it.

    I struggled with an internal battle between my conscious desires and my unconscious drives for years before I finally realized that the path of least resistance was the best – so I dedicated myself to aligning the two, and once I began taking steps to align them, my productivity and contendedness in all areas of my life skyrocketed.

    For me, what worked was consistency in mental exercise – spending 15 to 20 minutes a day visualizing what I consciously wanted, spending 5 minutes in the morning and 5 minutes before bed with emphatic affirmations, and 15 minutes a day with subliminal message self-hypnosis type videos.

    Everyone is different so the path might vary, but I do believe that once the conscious and the subconscious are in harmony – your success will explode through the roof.

    Keep up the great writing and I love the site design,

    Jason
    Intelligent Warrior Subliminal Training
    http://www.liveloaded.com

  • Kibrika

    Curseword. I know the theory, it’s getting things done that is my problem.

  • http://www.empoweredattraction.com christine

    This may not be an honorable thing to say but: after you’ve exercised for a little while, maybe 2mos or so, you begin to realize that you look better, age better, feel better, and think better than anyone around you. Then you realize that must be how YOU once were. And the fear of going back there and losing what you’ve accomplished, of disconnecting from this amazing place you’ve found in your head, is all it takes to get the shoes on.

  • http://www.wisdomgettingloaded.com/ tracy ho

    thanks you words keep me going,

    To your success,

    Tracy Ho
    wisdomgettingloaded

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  • Anonymous

    That’s true. If you don’ t see it as a hobby, or something you enjoy practicing, you just repeat some movements, without any enthusiasm or just keeping the track of the time, to see how many minutes are left ’till the end of the exercise.  Do it with passion or don’ t do it at all! RCA