Exercise and Committing to the Long Haul
If you’ve committed to including working out in your schedule, but you still struggle with the logistics of fitting in exercise, the stress of making time for exercise can undercut your commitment. Use the tips below for a real-world approach to ensuring that including workouts in your life does not become too burdensome for you to maintain.
Don’t consider exercise as something you do when you have time so that you’ll discourage yourself from choosing to scratch exercise plans on busy days. Instead, choose other optional activities that you engage in each day that you can bump off your schedule on days when you have less time. If you belong to a gym, spend some time establishing a non-gym exercise routine in addition to your gym workouts.
Whether it’s establishing a bicycle route or a walking route, or something more elaborate such as purchasing a piece of in-home exercise equipment or videos you can exercise to, having an at-home exercise routine will make you less dependent on being able to get to the gym in order to exercise. Make sure that your schedule accommodates the real-time it takes for you to exercise which includes your workouts plus the time it takes you to commute to the location where you’re working out plus the time it takes you to shower and get dressed after workouts.
Don’t overdo one day and excuse yourself from the next day in order to balance out your exercise routine because you’ll soon find that this trade system creates a chaotic and ultimately, inconsistent workout routine. If you’re looking to sustain your commitment to exercise, sticking to a time commitment that usually works for you is the best way to go.
Be very cautious about impulsively trying a new physical exercise to see whether you can do it before determining whether it’s likely that you’re not ready to try the exercise in order to avoid injuries that can interrupt your workout routine for a day or even for a much longer period of time.
For instance, plunging into an exercise, such as trying to lift more weight than you can because you may think you can, can be an impulsive decision that will negatively impact your ability to stick with your workout routine because of resultant injury. Don’t inflate the amount of time you spend exercising, and continue making a note of your actual times if you tend to do so.
If you’re prone to hyperbole and exaggeration, such as, I exercise all the time, it’s likely you’ll overestimate the amount of time you spend on your workouts, in which case keeping a log where you can quickly jot down how much time you spend working out can be helpful in preventing you from feeling like you’re spending more time on your workouts then you are.
Your exercise routine will provide you with the most health benefits if you incorporate it into a permanent feature of your healthy lifestyle. Use the tips above to more easily support your exercise routine as part of your day.
