10 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Exercise in 2020

Motivation is a choice. And if it is a choice, that means all you need to do decide to be motivated. Is this true, maybe, but by choosing to make it true will help you much more than waiting and hoping for motivation to arrive. Life can get busy. Things happen. But it is so important that you maintain your motivation to work out. To help you, here are 10 actionable steps to Ways to Motivate Yourself to Exercise immediately!

How can you Motivate Yourself to Exercise if you do not have something to aim for? What exactly do you want to achieve?

When writing down your goals, I highly recommend using the SMART principle.

Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely.

For example:

“I want to lose 5kg in 10 weeks by going to the gym at least 3 times a week.”

Once you have set yourself some goals, visualise yourself achieving them!

Why are you working out? What is it going to give you?

If you have a strong enough “why” as to the exact reason why you are working out, this step alone should ultimately feed your motivation.

It may be that you want to lose weight, run faster, get stronger etc.

And that’s fine.

But let’s delve deeper.

Focus on how you will FEEL once you have achieved your goals. What emotions/feelings would you have? Use this to drive your motivation.

Working out is an opportunity. Not a chore.

Imagine if you viewed training as a chance to get better… to progress… to improve yourself.

The fact that you have an opportunity to better yourself, wouldn’t that change your motivation?

Learn to love exercising. You know that it can benefit you. It is something that should be part of your daily routine.

Why would you spend so much time on something that you do not enjoy?

You are more likely to be motivated to do an exercise that actually interests you. There is no reason in forcing yourself to do a particular exercise if it is not enjoyable.

Choose a form of exercise that you love to do. (… there’s so many to pick from!)

It may be running, weight training, pilates classes or perhaps even just going for a walk.

Whatever it may be, pick something, do it and stick to it.

Grab a friend. A work mate. Your sibling. Anyone!

There are so many benefits of training with someone else.

They can provide you with some motivation, challenge and encouragement.

Just make sure that your work out partner is someone who is motivated and can hold you accountable. This will only fuel your motivation and make your work outs more enjoyable.

What kind of music do you listen to?

There’s nothing better than your favourite song to pump you up at the gym and motivate yourself to exercise.

Load your music player with an upbeat playlist of your favourite songs.

How do you know if you are improving if you are not tracking your progress?

For most of the time, it is difficult to see/feel if you are making any gains from your training. And that’s normal.

That’s why it is a great idea to document your improvements over fixed intervals in time.

For example, this could involve taking progress photos, recording in a strength training diary, measuring fat loss %, tracking the distance ran etc.

Remember – you are not competing against anyone else but yourself. Try to beat your measurement from the previous week!

Have no idea what exercise to do? Or want to hire someone else’s will power initially to Motivate Yourself to Exercise?

Not knowing what exercises to do can most definitely hinder your motivation to train.

You may feel overwhelmed, lazy and/or just simply do not know where to start.

Why not get trained by someone who’s job is to know exactly what to do?

This way, you can get a work out plan, have someone there to show you and also make sure that you do not slack off!

Figure out what days you are going to work out and stick to it!

Dedicate those couple of days every week to go exercise. Do not let other plans come up last minute and get in the way of your training days.

Picture this.

There are 24 hours in the day. If you work out just 1 hour a day, that is only 4%of your day. You can definitely dedicate 4% of your day to improving yourself at the gym. Use this 1 hour effectively!

Unfortunately, time is not like money where you can save it in a bank and use it for later. You either use the time wisely, or lose it forever.

Once your days are set, plan other activities in your day around this schedule.

If you do not make the time to work out, then it is likely there won’t be time for you to work out.

As cliché as it may sound, Rome was definitely not built in a day.

It is easy to lose motivation when you don’t see any results immediately.

But with a bit of time, consistency and dedication, you will see your progression.

You will see that weight come off. You will see your muscles developing. You will see that you are getting fitter.

Aim to think about your training goals in the long term. This way, you more likely to keep at it every week.

If you Motivate Yourself to Exercise with these 10 simple steps in your training, then prepare for your motivation levels to reach all new heights! But keep in mind, they will only work if you decide to actually do something about it.

Decide on what you want and go get it!