By Kenneth Muir (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: February 1, 2012
Last week we discussed the critical steps that need to be taken in order to survive your first few weeks of exercise, such as wearing the right clothes, having the right gear, and starting slowly. By now, you should be just getting over your initial first-week soreness. Hopefully by this point you haven’t packed it in yet. And if you haven’t dropped out, then you’re probably thinking about it. “What have I gotten myself into? Maybe I’m just going to hurt myself. Am I ready for this kind of commitment?” Fretting about it will get you nowhere. Well, it will get you back on the couch in a hurry. But that wasn’t the goal you originally set out to do (right? If so, you have some weird and inefficient goals). Luckily there are some motivational strategies that can stave off these negative thoughts, some of them being as simple as changing your social circle. And now is the time to start implementing these special tactics: before you can stop yourself from achieving your own goals.
Don’t hang out with people who make unhealthy choices
Before there are calls of discrimination, know this: science has got my back. According to a study conducted by Arizona State University, published last year in the American Journal of Public Health, having friends who make unhealthy choices increases your own risk of making poor health decisions, such as getting dessert or skipping your workout. Apparently, if you have a large number of close friends who make these poor decisions, you’re way more likely to crumble to peer pressure. Generally, unhealthy people do things that are tailored for unhealthy people. By joining in on those activities, you too will join their ranks. Cruel though it may be, you may want to re-evaluate what you’re getting out of your friends. If your answer is “a lot of goading into getting dessert,” you could have some tough choices ahead of you.
The upside is that you can attain the same effects by hanging out with healthier people. If your goal is to become thinner, hang out with thinner people. If you want to become Mr. Universe, find some bodybuilders to chum around with. You’ll get the benefits of being engaged in healthier activities and choices, and your motivation to exercise should likewise increase.
Make goals with a friend
Or better yet, join some kind of exercise club. The important thing is to have someone with you while you exercise. For most of us, a six-km run feels more like 18-km when doing it alone. Having someone there to push you when you feel like giving up will help you stick with it when your morale is low. Better yet, you can maintain your workout schedule if you’ve made plans with someone else. It becomes so easy when exercising alone to a skip workout if you don’t feel like doing it that day. If you exercise with other people, it means that they depend on you to be there, and not showing up would mean letting them down. It’s crude, but the slight guilt-trip will get you out the door. At my exercise club, you’ll be openly mocked if you miss workouts, and haggled at length for days afterwards. Skipping a workout there just isn’t worth the hassle. Luckily other people are more forgiving than that crowd.
And, frankly, exercising with other people is just straight up more enjoyable. Just make sure you’re of a similar fitness level: it’s no fun having to wait for someone much less fit than you, and it sucks even harder to be waited on. Find someone who is fairly compatible with your own speed and strength.
Vary your workouts
If your goal is simply to lose weight, the optimal thing for you to do would be to run three-plus times a week for 30-plus minutes per session, using at least 60 per cent of your max heart rate. Sound boring? You bet. Anything that becomes routine also becomes boring in a big hurry, and sometimes boredom is the big motivation-killer. To combat this, don’t always do the most optimal workout. Mix it up! If you normally run on a treadmill or a track, go run a mountain trail instead. If you normally swim laps, go swim at a lake.
Alternatively you could change tact completely and play weekly basketball sessions with friends. Go on a long hike. Variety is the spice of life, and is consequently the key to staying active, so once or twice a week, try straying from the optimal and instead attend to other active options. Theoretically you won’t meet your goals as quickly, but in reality you’ll be more excited to exercise and you won’t miss as many workouts due to waning interest, therefore improving upon what seems at first glance to be optimal.
At all costs, don’t skip workouts
It’s sort of counter intuitive, but the less you exercise, the less you’ll want to exercise. If you miss a workout, your motivation will likely take a dive. I’m not sure why this occurs, but it does. Alternatively, the more you exercise, the more you’ll want to exercise. For this reason, a good way to keep your motivation strong is to exercise often and consistently. Taking a week off due to scheduling conflicts or some other reason will be motivationally debilitating. Try to avoid missing workouts at all costs. Even if you’ve developed an injury, there are usually other ways you can stay active without aggravating the problem, such as working out your core and upper body if you have a leg injury. And, above all else: some days you won’t feel like doing your workout. Ignore this feeling and go do your workout. You’ll feel much better if you just suck it up and do it; trust me on that one. Nike’s slogan got it right. Otherwise, you’ll bash yourself for missing the workout that you voluntarily skipped.
By being more proactive and varied in the way you exercise, you can keep your motivation on the up and up, allowing you to take the necessary steps to meet your goals. By using these tools, and the tips that were provided in the last issue of The Cascade, you should be able to blast through your first few months of exercise without any problems. Next week, we’ll discuss how nutrition can improve upon the effectiveness of your workouts, which should get you to your goals even faster.
