How to Stay With An Exercise Routine
Planning and setting up an exercise routine is fairly easy, and its benefits are well known. The hard part is staying with it. You might initially begin your routine with a really good start, but before you know it your morale begins to decline and eventually your activity level diminishes.
One of the problems is the amount physical work, discipline, commitment and determination that exercising actually requires. In today’s society you might work hard typing away at lightning speed, sending text messages halfway across the country(or world for the ambitious). But all too often words like walk, jog, and run are nothing more than speed settings on a riding lawn mower.
Sure, you might also be used to lifting some weight here or there. Maybe you’ve even occasionally used your awesome strength to impress everyone by pulling a paper jam from a printer. Unfortunately, even the mightiest paper jam can be put to shame by a few simple exercise weights.
So how then does a modern human being stand a chance of establishing an exercise routine in a world where a persons idea of a vigorous workout is having to park at the far end of the parking lot?
Start small…
Though it may not seem like it at first, one of the main hurdles to overcome when beginning an exercise program is the amount of excitement you initially have. You might be jumping for joy at the prospect of a fitter, new you. But be careful not to overdo it. Its incredibly easy to begin a routine with a great amount of enthusiasm and effort, only to find yourself falling behind a week or two later.
When you start big, you eventually begin to get tired of trying to maintain the same drive and determination you had began with. As the initial excitement wears off, it can get harder and harder to maintain the same high level of activity as part of a regular routine. This leads to you loosing motivation, which leads to shorter and less enthusiastic workouts. Eventually this causes you to start skipping out on a few exercises all together. Then before you really even realize what happened, you notice that its been weeks since you’ve last exercised.
This sad sad tale is all too common…
The problem is that you start out too fast and with too much effort. This isn’t a baking contest, and you aren’t really going to find instant gratification. Instead of trying to get a big jump start by pouring all kinds of effort into your first few days, it is important to learn to pace yourself. Start off slowly, and then work your way up from there when you feel really ready. This way you will be able to have longer lasting enthusiasm because its likely that you won’t have such a strong desire to lower your activity level after the initial excitement wears off.
Commitment…
Laziness and procrastination are powerful forces. Establishing a basic plan for an exercise routine is your first line of defense against these forces, as well as your first step towards making a commitment. By setting up some kind of plan, you are saying to yourself “Okay, this is what I am committing myself to.” Having at least a somewhat formal plan helps keep you on track.
You can set your initial exercise plan to say that you will exercise every day, every other day, or even just once a week. Whats important is having a starting point which you know you can stick to. Your initial commitment should be something reasonably easy to start with. That way you will have a base line that you can follow to make sure that you do not get too overwhelmed. You can easily increase your base line if you feel compelled, but it can be devastating to your routine if you need to continuously decrease your minimum. So pick something that you know you can stay with and be careful not to commit yourself to something that is unrealistic. The key is having a minimum that you can commit to follow. Without a solid commitment of some kind, procrastination and laziness can easily invade and wreak havoc on any hopes of establishing a good exercise routine.
