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9 Psychological Tricks to Develop a Fitness Habit
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Chaining
Connecting exercise to a solid event that you know will happen is a great way to stay consistent. I know that I will leave work at 5 every weekday – instead of going home, I bring my workout clothes with me and go straight to the gym.
This chaining is also why it can be hard to work out if there’s no cue.
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Precommitment
Precommitments are actions that get you invested in going to the gym. If you’ve committed to going with a partner, you’re hardly going to leave them hanging.
Similarly, bringing clothes with you to work, packing your gym bag in advance, or laying out your workout clothes before bed for a morning workout are tricks that make it easier to stay consistent.
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Reducing Barriers
Reducing barriers could mean switching to a gym that’s closer to your house, having a set program so that you’re never wondering what you should be doing, or preparing your gym bag in advance (also a precommitment).
Reducing barriers to activities you want to do makes you more likely to follow through.
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Set Better Goals
A good goal is specific, realistic, and personally important.
Too many people say they work out to “lose weight” or “be healthy,” but you can have more success by getting specific. Why will losing weight improve your life, personally?
It might give you more confidence or have some other positive outcome. The important part is that you understand how your goal would impact you.
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Set Checkpoints
When you set a 3-month goal, check in after one month to see how you’re doing. If you haven’t made progress or your goal progress is too slow, don’t worry about it!
A checkpoint is designed to correct your mistakes and get back on track. That way you don’t wind up at your deadline and realize you haven’t made any progress.
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Identify Roadblocks
When we set goals, we often become overly optimistic. It makes us ignore the hard parts and get frustrated when we encounter the challenges that any goal will have.
Figure out what the roadblocks will be in advance. Spend 5 minutes writing down all the potential challenges you can face on the path to success.
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Overcome Roadblocks
You have a list of challenges that you will probably encounter, so now all you have to do is solve them.
Be specific here too. “Having low energy” is not a specific enough roadblock. Something like “I’m tired when I get home from work and just want to collapse and watch Netflix” is much better. When you get specific, it becomes a lot easier to find solutions.
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Create Your Master Plan
Once you have a plan in place for actually getting to a workout, make a plan for what you will do and when.
- Having a set program to follow.
- Set specific times to work out. If you vaguely know you have to get 3 workouts in this week, it’s easy to push them back to later. If you know that you’ll workout on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 5:45 pm, it’s a lot harder to justify skipping.
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The real benefits
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Home exercises can help
It's tough to build a lot of strength or otherwise make progress without the incremental weights you find at a gym, but a few inexpensive home tools and specific movements can go a long way.
It is important to ensure that you prioritize compound movements that work muscle systems, not individual muscles. You'll get a lot more done in less time if you focus on bigger movements - squat, bench, deadlift, row, overhead press.
Lower and upper body movements
Goblet squats and squat jumps are great for your lower body when you only have dumbbells. You could also try lunge variations, split squats, step-ups, and deadlift variations.
For your upper body, you could do some chest presses, pushups, row variations, curls, tricep extensions or pullups (if you have a pullup bar installed in a doorway.)
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Sore Is Not Always Good
While it feels satisfying to have sore, aching limbs, and a sign of a good workout. This is entirely unnecessary and one can eliminate the soreness by doing slow reps, or avoiding eccentric (muscle...
Heavy Lifting For Bulk
One can get stronger by increasing the size of the individual muscle fibers, and by recruiting more of the muscle fiber to work together when needed.
A bulky body is also considered a negative in certain sports. Getting bulky is a specific, targeted training which includes high-volume exercises, calorie intake, and protein supplements, and cannot be attained by simply lifting heavier weights.
Using Scales
Scales are actually useful in providing you with information about your general progress and direction.
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Struggling To Build Healthy Habits
- We tend to bite off more than we can chew, go too fast too soon, and then get overwhelmed too quickly.
- We’re conditioned these days to expect and receive instant gratification.
Your “Big Why”
As you’re determining the habits or resolutions you’re trying to set, make the habit part of a bigger cause that’s worth the struggle.
You’re not just going to the gym, you’re building a new body that you’re not ashamed of so you can start dating again.
Healthy Habit Building 101
There are 3 parts to a good or bad habit: Cue (what triggers the action), Routine (the action itself), Reward (the positive result because of the action).
You have trained your brain to take a cue (you see a doughnut), anticipate a reward (a sugar high), and make the behavior automatic (nom that donut).Compare that to a cue (you see your running shoes), anticipate a reward (a runner’s high), and make the behavior automatic (go for a run!).