Scheduling workouts ahead of time will increase your chances of making it to the gym. Keeping a consistent schedule will make working out a fixture in your daily routine and it will start to feel unnatural when you haven’t done your workout for the day. It may be hard at first to establish working out as a routine, but a couple of weeks of consistently going to the gym or taking part in other physical fitness activities, even through times of soreness or tiredness, will make it part of your daily life.
The soreness may set in at first but persevere because it will get easier. The soreness is just your body adapting to the new environment of working out.
For the most part, try and schedule your workouts in the morning if you can. You will feel better during the day knowing that you have completed your workout and the energizing effect derived from it will last you through the day.
However, if you are not a morning person, don’t force yourself to work out at that time if you cannot give it your best effort. But remember that the longer you put off the day’s workout, the less likely you will be to do it.
If you miss a workout to go out with friends or eat some fattening meal, don’t feel guilty. Accept that you didn’t go and enjoy the choice you made. It is alright to cheat here and there or skip a workout if you’ve got to do something once in awhile as long as you don’t make it a habit. Just get back in there tomorrow and stay on course towards your goals.
If you feel that your workout is starting to get flat or boring, change it up. Vary how many sets or reps you do with each exercise. Substitute other exercises in for the usual exercises done during the workout. You could also change the order of the exercises and do it backwards.
It is inevitable that you will get tired of the doing the same old thing every time, so put some spice in your workout. Doing some cardio before you workout has also been shown through research to boost your workout energy.
You could also listen to music to get yourself going on all cylinders during a workout. Pop on the headphones and listen to your favorite tunes. I’d often get lost in a few good songs while doing cardio on the treadmill and look down and notice that 10 minutes had gone by without even feeling it.
I recommend that you not listen to the music until later on in your workout. This will provide with a new jolt of energy to keep you going strong through the rest of your workout.