How To Stick to Your Workout Routine — 5 Habits You HAVE To Try

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Excerpt: Coming up with a good workout routine isn’t the hard part—sticking to one is. Learn how to stick to your workout routine with these 5 ideas.

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Introduction: The Process of Finding Your Ideal Routine

Coming up with a brilliant workout routine isn’t the hard part. Google will give you millions of suggestions. It’s following through and staying consistent that’s the hard part. I have been lifting weights and following different workout routines on and off for over a decade now. Like so many others in pursuit of a healthier, stronger, leaner lifestyle, I’ve followed the fads, jumped on the trends, and changed my mind more times than I can remember.

I’ve google searched, joined gyms, joined forces with other motivated individuals, gotten advice from personal trainers, bought DVDs, bought equipment, built machines. And have, each time, faded out after a while – regardless of how fool-proof my plan was. I’d always start off strong, thinking that this (whatever this was at the time) was the routine that would stick for sure!  But, of course, I’d follow it for a few weeks, become complacent with my efforts or results (…or come up with some other brilliant excuse on why I didn’t want to continue) and would eventually slow to a halt and find myself – no more than a few days later – back in good ol’ square one.  Sound familiar?

The mastery mindset here is that all of my above mentioned efforts weren’t failures – they were opportunities for me to learn more about myself. And the same is true for each of yours. The five habits I list below are ideas that, over the past decade, have led to my most consistent workout routine streak of my life.  I have been showing up to my workouts for over a year now with only a handful of missed workouts (following a 5 workout/week schedule).  And as you can imagine – it feels really good and I have been making more consistent gains than I ever have before.

The five habits are powerful and multi-facetted – they could easily extend beyond just workout routines and plug-in to better your lifestyle elsewhere.  Keep an open mind while reading and please, don’t close out of this article without having taken action on applying these concepts to your life. I know they will help you if you apply them and I also know that when you close out of this article without having taken any action it’ll be very easy for you to forget about them. I’ve written in detail about each of the key concepts below in previous articles and recommend you follow the link to the full articles if one catches your eye.  Good luck and may your future workout routine (or other lifestyle changes) be the one(s) that finally sticks!

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The List: 5 habits that will help you finally stick to your workout routine:

1)  Block out workout time – It has to be a top priority. When I finally decided that it was no longer going to be about working out when I felt like it but rather when I planned for it – everything started to change.  As I mentioned in my post on this topic, Amateurs (as described by Steven Pressfield in Turning Pro) follow their moods and inspirations while Pros follow their plan and determination.  I finally decided to Turn Pro and prioritized my workouts at the top of my list – as they should be.  Canceling or overbooking my workout time was (and still is) only an absolute last resort.

2)  Adopt the 70% mindset.  For a long time I thought that if I wasn’t giving 100% in my workouts, I was slacking – and it led to too many burnouts to count.  I would go so hard for a few weeks and then simply gas out.  What I wasn’t taking into consideration was that two workouts done at 70% is better than one workout at 100% – there’s a consistency bonus.  Once I adopted the mindset of finishing my workouts so that I’m left wanting more and not, wanting-to-never-see-that-place-again, I started to show up more consistently and in better spirit.  It’s the marathon mindset vs. the sprint mindset.

3)  Learn to Never Underestimate the Power of 1% Gains. This one was big for me as I felt like I would always hit the same ceilings and max out at the same weights, reps, and sets for the exercises I was doing before this past year of change.  The problem was that I was thinking 100% all of the time and was trying to increase too fast.  By focusing on 1% gains and increasing the weight by 5 lbs, or increasing the rep count by one, or trying and get one more set in before the time was up I knew I was progressing and I knew I was doing it in a sustainable way.  Progress is and always will be the biggest motivator – doing it 1% of the time keeps you steady progressing in a realistic and scalable way.

4)  At the end of each workout, get in the habit of planning your next workout.  This way, when I would show up to my session next, I knew I wouldn’t have to think.  When you have to think you lose momentum and willpower.  The only thinking you should be doing the day of the workout is, “How am I going to lift this weight?”  Or, “How am I going to finish this set.”  Or, “Breathe, you idiot before you pass out!”  By planning ahead, I also commit to that next workout which would give me all the more reason to show up.

5)  Accept that there are going to be days when you really don’t want to workout – and come up with a plan on how to handle those days.  Laziness is an inevitable reality of the human condition.  By coming up with a plan on how to handle those lazy/ tired/ sick days (like, having a stretch session or substitute workout) I know I will be much more likely to succeed.  Because the biggest difference between the successful and the unsuccessful is that the successful show up and do what they gotta do even when they don’t want to do it.  So the next time I don’t feel like working out, guess what?  Make it so that excuses won’t stand a chance.