When you don’t feel like getting off your butt to exercise, where do you find the motivation to exercise? We all ask ourselves this question – you are not alone. You need to get past thinking about exercising and just do it.
There are many ways to motivate yourself to exercise. Some work better than others. I asked around to find out what motivates people to stick to their exercise programs. I took all those results and put together the top seven ways to motivate yourself to exercise.
- Make exercise a fun experience! Find an activity that is fun to do. Sure, you may think the cardio machines at the gym are dull as dishwater, but you can make the cardio machine experience more fun by listening your favorite music or better yet, a great book on your iPod.Group fitness classes are designed to be fun. Try something new like kickboxing or dancing. You may even meet some new friends.
- Join an outdoor hiking group. Meet new people, get out in the great outdoors, get back to nature and burn up the calories all at the same time!
- Get an at-home fitness program like Hip Hop Abs by Shaun T, or Turbo Jam with Chalene Johnson. These are fun fitness programs that you can do at home that will definitely raise your energy levels and keep you interested.
- Use visualization. Visualize how you are going to look once you reach your goal of losing that 20 pounds or getting rock hard abs. Picture yourself running for 30 minutes and imagine how good you will feel. If you can only do 10 pushups and you want to do 15, start visualizing yourself doing 15 pushups. Picture yourself doing them and count each one in your mind. Visualization is used by many top athletes to get them past performance plateaus.
- Sign up for a 5K race. If you sign up for a 5K race you will have a certain date that you have to be ready to run or walk the race. This will give you a reason to train for something.
- Workout with a friend. Find a workout buddy that can help you stay accountable.
- Think about how awful you will feel if you don’t. Once you start exercising, you will experience the release of endorphins in your body which give you a natural high! How do you want to feel today? Yukky or energized?
Have you ever wondered how much time you waste thinking about exercising? Stop thinking about it and just do it? Nothing will change unless you take control now and change it.
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How do you motivate yourself to exercise and how often do you exercise?
