Form a gym habit

How do you make going to the gym a habit in your daily life?

Going to the gym can be difficult. I mean, we all know that we should, but how many of us actually do? How many of us plan to go to the gym on January 1, just to have given up a month later?

Going to the gym is great. It makes you healthy, strong, fit, and reach your weight and fitness goals. Going to the gym should become a habit. It should just be a part of your day, like eating lunch.

Maybe you go to the gym every morning before work, or on the way home from work. Maybe you just go on the weekends. It doesn't matter when you go. The point is, you should develop a gym habit. Make it a regular routine in your life, and it will be much easier to get fit as you won't be having to force yourself to go to the gym.

How often should you go to the gym?

There are no real rules to how often you should go to the gym. Rather, the important thing is that you should make going to the gym a regular occasion. Don't just go when you feel like it, instead make it a part of your routine... a habit!

Plan to go to the gym every Monday, or every weekend, or three times per week (on regular set days). Many of us think of going to the gym as a chore. We know it's good for us, but we lose our motivation and just can't seem to make ourselves go.

Instead, going to the gym should be a habit. Even if you go just one day per week, make absolute certain that you DO go that one day.

Ideally, you should go to the gym three to five days per week. Vary your weightlifting exercises with healthy cardio, stretching, and even yoga. Don't overdo it either, or you'll burn out, or worse, risk injuring yourself.

Be sure to take a rest day or two throughout the week to allow your muscles to recover. On your rest days, you can practice some yoga (even via YouTube from home) or just take a nice walk.

Again, it's not HOW OFTEN you go to the gym, but IF YOU GO REGULARLY. Once your gym time becomes a gym habit, it will just become easier to go. Once you force yourself to form a gym habit, it will become a part of your life.

>> How long does it take to form a habit?

How to want to go to the gym

Exercise is so much easier and more pleasant when you want to do it.

At first, exercise feels like torture. It's miserable and painful and uncomfortable. But after a while, you'll start to discover that you actually kind of like it... or at least like the way it makes you feel.

By making going to the gym a habit - instead of a chore - eventually it will just become a part of your healthy lifestyle. You won't even think about skipping the gym any more than you would think about skipping brushing your teeth.

Re-frame going to the gym and exercising as a positive thing. Instead of thinking of how uncomfortable or painful the workout is, think about how strong your body is becoming, or how you are beginning to feel that your pants are just a bit looser around the waist.

Once you start to see results - weight loss, muscle gain, looser clothes, or even just an increase in energy and overall health - you will begin to gain momentum and want to keep going to the gym to keep improve your health and working towards your goals.

Another method to want to go to the gym is finding a gym buddy, a friend or partner who can help keep you accountable in your workouts. If you can't find a friend to drag to the gym with you, or don't know anyone at the gym, consider personal training. It's a great way to keep yourself accountable and keep going to the gym regularly.

What to do when I don't feel like going to the gym

But even if we know all of the great benefits of going to the gym and having some exercise, there are still days when we just don't feel like it. Even if you know how good you'll feel after working out, some days the pull of the sofa and Netflix is stronger.

But you can't stop. Allowing yourself to break your habit is allowing yourself to fail.

On the days when you really don't feel like going to the gym... go anyway.

Hear me out:

You don't even have to exercise.

Put on your gym shorts and your jogging shoes. Just get dressed and drive to the gym. Once you are there, you can just sit down and read a book. Or go to the sauna. If your gym has a pool and hot tub, just soak for a few minutes in the hot tub.

After that, you have permission to drive home without even exercising at all.

We all have days when we don't feel like going to the gym, and that's ok. It's alright, even healthy, to take a day off of our workout routine. The thing is, it's important not to break our new gym habit. Just the act of getting dressed and going to the gym, even if you don't plan on working out at all, is a healthy step towards your lifelong health goals. Eventually, it will become easier and easier until one  day, you find that you crave and look forward to your gym time.

Yes, it takes time, but I promise you that day will come... perhaps even sooner than you think! The important thing is just to make the act of physically going to the gym a habitual part of life.