Fitness Tip of the Week: Stick With Your Workout Routine

workout routine

As a busy mom and personal trainer, I have to balance many tasks throughout the day while maintaining my physical fitness. It can get difficult. I’m sure you can relate to constantly multitasking and trying to stay healthy or improve your fitness level at the same time.

So how in the heck are you supposed to stick with your workout routine?

I have a simple mental tip that has helped me maintain my fitness level day in and day out.

It starts by eliminating an all-or-nothing mentality and outcome-focused approach to working out. How many of you have said these things:

“I have to go to the gym”

“If I don’t work out I’ll never lose this weight”

While there’s nothing wrong with working out because of some external goal like improving your appearance, it’s far more rewarding and successful to focus internally on the process and journey. It’s utilizing the principles of internal motivation versus external motivation.

When you’re internally motivated, you’re interested in the learning and growing process. So you truly enjoy the transformation and are motivated by the experience of your workout routine. If you’re externally motivated when it comes to a workout routine, you’re motivated by the external reward—the physical changes, weight loss, muscle gain, etc.

When you’re externally motivated, you’re bound to consider work as a chore or a task. Eventually you’ll be less likely to stick to your workout routine because it isn’t enjoyable and requires you to occasionally “go through the motions” or force yourself to show up.

But you can experience lifelong fitness if you can go into the gym with the intention of

  • Enjoying the practice and fine-tuning of skills
  • Loving the freedom of movement
  • Finding joy in the challenge of pushing yourself to overcome obstacles

If you can make this mental switch, I believe your workouts will become a lot more fun! And this sense of fun will translate into a fiery motivation that will undoubtedly help you stick with your workout routine for years to come.

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