How To Get The Most From Your Home Workout Programs

We all have busy lives, and it can be all too easy to give the gym a miss every now and then. However, after missing a couple of workouts it gets easier to stop going altogether. If you want to maintain greater consistency with your workouts, here are a few top tips to put into practice.

Invest In Yourself

All too often, we focus more on others than we do on ourselves. Whether you’re looking after children, keeping your employer happy by working long hours, or caring for elderly relatives, it’s all too easy to forget about caring for yourself too. However, you should try hard to make your own well-being your top priority. After all, having a happy, healthy lifestyle positively impacts everyone around you. When you invest in your health, you’ll have more energy, better well-being, and a more positive mood. 

Set Yourself Goals

Thinking big may have its benefits, but it can also set you up to fail. Setting unrealistic goals and having no clear plan to achieve them is a sure-fire road to failure. If you don’t see results quickly, it’s just too tempting to become discourage and quit. 

Setting both short- and long-term goals is vital in every aspect of life, particularly health and well-being as they keep you committed, focused, and on track. So, start setting some now.

Make your long-term goals specific, measurable, and with a specified time limit so you know precisely what you’re working towards. Make sure that your goals are your own, too, and not those of your family or friends. It’s far easier to work hard and dedicate time to achieving something you’ve chosen for yourself rather than trying to meet someone else’s ideals. 

When you’ve determined your long term goals, the next step is to write them on paper and put them somewhere in view where you can see them regularly. The fridge door is often a good choice. It will help you remain consistent if you’re reminded of them on a daily basis.

Once you’ve set out your long term goals, you can set small, behaviour based goals which will support your long term aims. These goals should be ones that you can take action immediately on. With small, behaviour based goals, you should be able to achieve them every day, helping you to build up some serious momentum. You’ll be able to see your programme is working so you stay committed. 

Short term goals may be something like:

• Eating at least one vegetable with every meal.
• Drinking water with every meal.
• Doing a workout three times per week.
• Increasing the distance that you run by half a mile every week.

Surround Yourself With A Team

Your fitness journey doesn’t have to be lonely. Most people who begin working out quit during their first month because they find the experience too isolating. Unfortunately, many people find that they head to their local gym and discover they have no support, no motivation, and no community, leaving them feeling alone, unsupported, confused, and, above all, intimidated. It isn’t hard to see why they then find it difficult to be consistent in their routine and to achieve fitness success.

It’s important to find the right gym for you, where you feel motivated and supported to work constantly towards your goals. You may find a group programme is ideal for you, or why not work out with one of your friends or family members? 

Make Exercising Fun

A lot of people equate exercise with being miserable. There’s a common misconception that working out means working to exhaustion in order to notice results. They believe they have to run for hours on a treadmill, boring themselves to death, or do gruelling and tedious repetitions. 

Unfortunately, this misconception has led to too many people viewing exercise as being a chore and a negative thing, but that shouldn’t be the case at all. Exercise should be fun. In fact, it has to be fun if you’re going to stick with it consistently and achieve the goals that you’ve set for yourself. 

So how can you bring a little more excitement and fun to your workout? 

Working out with a family member or friend is always a good idea, or you could join a class where you can meet other likeminded individuals. You can also try switching up the equipment you use and the routines you try to add some extra variety. 

Many people find creating a playlist containing their favourite workout songs gives them the motivation that they need, or they join events such as obstacle courses or road races. Bike rides and hikes are other good ways of bringing a little more fun to a workout.

Start Every Day The Right Way

Developing and maintaining consistency in your routine centres around your habits. You need to develop habits that move you towards your health and fitness goals and that you can stick with every day.

Humans are naturally habit-forming creatures and around 40% of the things we do every day are purely because of habits – we do these things without thinking about them. When you stop thinking about them, they’ve become part of your daily routine for life, and that’s something that’s essential when it comes to wellness. 

The best place to begin is to introduce a single healthy habit every morning to set up your day the right way. It’ll put you on track and give you momentum.

Some good examples of healthy habits to introduce each morning include: 

• Drinking a glass of lemon and water first thing after getting out of bed.
• Doing some daily stretches every morning before work.
• Wake up early to prepare a smoothie or healthy breakfast food.
• Go for a run or head to the gym before work instead of going after work.

When you begin your day the healthy way, you’ll find that you feel better and move better. Over time, it’ll also help you to achieve greater consistency.