On January 1st, gyms get flooded with newcomers whose main slogan is “New year, new me.” Out of all these beginners, though, only 10-20% keep going to the gym after 2 weeks. Most people don’t know how to stay consistent with working out, because it is uncomfortable.
Thankfully, you clicked on this article. It shows that you’re aware of the problem and wish to know the practical solutions. If you implement what I’ll tell you here, I guarantee: you will always keep going to the gym, and eventually start building other good habits.
In this article, I will tell you why you aren’t consistent in fitness, and how you can keep working out to make more long-term progress. Let’s begin with knowing why you’re struggling.
Why You Aren’t Consistent in Your Workout Routine
I don’t know your exact situation, but there are common reasons people abandon fitness whenever they try to get into it. The first and the deadliest one – unrealistic expectations.
They do some bicep curls, push-ups, incorrect forms of compound exercises, and then expect a CBum physique after 2 weeks. No, no, no, this is NOT how it works.
Any achievement worth pursuing requires regular and consistent efforts for months. Losing weight (or gaining it), building more muscle, getting lean – all of these require showing up daily, eating clean, and optimizing daily routines for both productivity and fitness.
Many people aren’t willing to do all this because their minds are corrupted by instant gratification: they want everything now, with as little effort as possible.
If you maintain this approach and keep being a lazy fuck who wishes life served everything on a plate, you won’t achieve anything. Accept that fitness demands consistency to work, and it’ll be mentally easier to keep going to the gym.
There are some other reasons people abandon fitness quickly, but we’ll discuss that in later paragraphs. It’s time for you to get what you wanted – a guide to stay consistent with working out.
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How to Keep Going to The Gym
Any habit consists of 3 Rs: reminder, routine, and reward. They give you a reason to go, help your brain form new connections, and remind you of a task that you need to do. If you want to form a stable habit that lasts, you should incorporate all 3 of these elements.
Any result-oriented movement needs a clear direction. To help you stay motivated and know what you need to do in the gym, first, we need to identify your goals.
1: Identify Your Goals and Tasks
Why do you want to stay consistent in the gym? What is the reason you want to keep going?
Do you want to build an aesthetic body that you’ll be proud of? Do you want to stop feeling like shit and get rid of that fat? Or do you want to gain more weight and more respect?
Think about these questions for a moment. Be honest in your answers, and just tell yourself what you really want, for no one else will judge you for it. You’ll work out primarily for yourself, and not for satisfying others.
If your goal is an aesthetic physique, learn about the best muscles to build, exercises that affect them the most, shift to a protein diet, and focus on these few exercises to save time and energy.
If your goal is weight loss, you should do regular intense cardio, like HIIT, limit your consumption of high-calorie food, and replace fat with muscle mass.
When you know what you want and how you will get it, it becomes much easier to stay consistent with working out than if you do this in a state of uncertainty.
2: Adjust Your Expectations to Stay Consistent With Working Out
Most people fail to keep exercising because of how much they want to get in a little time. No matter how hard you try to lift or how much protein you stuff in your mouth, it’s impossible to achieve most fitness goals in weeks.
The more you expect and the less you get, the more you get disappointed. This disappointment makes your mind associate the gym with pain and avoid it altogether. Result?
You keep lying on a couch, watch Netflix for 3 hours a day, and watch your health deteriorate day by day. That’s how 80% of people live. Do you want to live the same way?
This isn’t just about making you look good, but about making you a better person. Avoid normal people’s fate by adjusting your expectations. Stop expecting quick results, stop neurotically scrolling the Web to find some weight loss shakes, and just work!
This is how you stay consistent with working out: you recognize that your goals need time, effort, and simply do the little tasks on a daily basis.
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3: Start Small, Then Progressively Overload
Another big mistake most people make is that they focus on intensity instead of consistency. They exercise extremely hard to feel good about themselves for 2 weeks, feel too tired, and quit.
This is not how it works. If you go to the gym and train your chest really hard once, you will see nothing. If you train your legs and squat really hard for a day, you will see nothing.
But if you lower the intensity and show up on a regular basis for weeks and months, you will see progress. It’s better to train 3-4 days a week for an hour than to train 2 times for 4 hours.
Start small, with small weights, few repetitions, and short workout durations. Get comfortable with doing exercises correctly and simply showing up. When you feel like you’ve formed a good habit foundation, escalate: spend more time in the gym, set more weights, and push past pain.
Keep doing this for 2 more weeks, and now you have a stable habit. Your mind and body feel bad whenever you don’t go to the gym. That’s why you keep doing it anyway. Before you get used to going regularly, though, you need to consciously remind yourself about the gym.
4: Remind Yourself About Fitness
It’s time to cover the first R of habit: reminders. If you want to stay consistent in the gym, you’ll need to create different reminders that tell you: “Get your ass up, it’s time to grind.”
There are various ways you can do this. Pick a habit tracker app and set up notifications on your phone. Put an inspiring bodybuilder as your desktop background image, or put a quote about the necessity of suffering.
Get a morning routine and prepare yourself for hard work. Buy healthy food and put it in the fridge. Just do stuff that will remind you about going to the gym.
Additionally, you can remove reminders about bad habits from your day-to-day life, like junk food, weed, or other substances you may have at home. Throw them the fuck out, and never look back. It’s an important step when it comes to changing your life and quitting addictions.
Just changing reminders alone will make staying consistent in working out much easier, since these triggers tell your brain that being lazy and not taking care of your health is unacceptable.
To make the process even more effective, you need to motivate the mind to keep working out by giving it some pleasure in return.
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5: Make Working Out Enjoyable
If you want to stop being a lazy person who wastes his time by scrolling on Netflix picking the best show to watch, you need to enjoy going to the gym.
Think of what you like, and find ways to integrate them in your fitness routine to make the process more enjoyable. This way, your brain will associate working out with pleasure, and it will adopt the habit much more quickly.
For example, you may enjoy the taste of milkshakes or love a certain playlist. If that’s the case, listen to your favorite playlist while exercising, prepare, and drink a protein shake each time you finish another workout.
You can make some other changes in your own attitude towards the gym. Instead of viewing it as an uncomfortable habit that you must do to achieve certain goals, think of it as a thing you enjoy doing. Say to yourself that you love exercising, lifting weights, and try to work as hard as possible.
By changing the attitude and making workouts more pleasurable, you will want to come back consistently. Enjoy the process, be disciplined, love the pain and pleasure of training yourself, and you’ll make significantly faster progress on your fitness journey.
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6: Create a Routine to Stay Consistent With Working Out
We already covered 2 Rs: reminders and rewards. Now we need to discuss the last R that will solve your problem completely: routine. Without routine and regular efforts, no achievement is possible. Instead of going when you feel like it, force yourself to go for a certain time period.
Just like a morning routine, a proper workout plan helps you stay focused, eliminates uncertainty, and tells you exactly what to do to maximize results.
Identify when you’ll go to the gym, what specific muscle groups you’ll train on workout days, what exercises you’ll do for how many sets, and how you’ll rest your body.
Is it difficult? Yes, it is. But it’s better to sit down and create a good fitness plan in 2 hours than wander around without a clear direction for months, like you did before.
If you don’t want to create a workout plan yourself, download a free one from the Internet and use it. Select a workout plan based on what fitness goals you have, and commit to following it every day, especially when you don’t feel like it.
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7: Go to the Gym When You Least Feel Like It
Finally, it’s time to give you the last, yet the most important piece of advice. You can create a routine, set up a playlist, shift expectations, but if you don’t show up, all of this is for nothing.
Your mind will try to produce different excuses for why it supposedly can’t go to the gym, or try to “protect” you from discomfort. Whenever you hear these messages, it’s a sign that you must go exercise anyway.
Listen. Sometimes your mind is your worst enemy. Most people don’t know how to control it, listen to their emotions, and then regret the consequences of their decisions.
You can control it by meditating regularly and accepting that weightlifting is your mandatory task, like going to work or taking care of your family. This way, you’ll defeat excuses and overcome your habit of giving up (if you have it, of course).
Set high standards for yourself, try your best to achieve them, but don’t beat yourself up if you fail. Instead, simply learn from your mistakes, forgive yourself, and make necessary changes.
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Always Stay Consistent With Working Out
Tons of guys have problems with working out on a consistent basis. They exercise intensely for 2-3 weeks, and then quit. The main reasons for this outcome are unrealistic expectations and a lack of specific goals.
If you want to build the habit of going to the gym, use these strategies:
- Identify your goals and tasks
- Adjust your expectations
- Start small, then escalate
- Remind yourself about fitness
- Make working out enjoyable
- Create a specific routine
- Go to the gym when you least feel like it.
A large part of whether you’ll succeed or not depends on your willingness to work on the task, even if you don’t feel like it. Remember: it’s not about how intensely you exercise, but about how regularly you show up.
If you stay consistent with working out for just a few weeks, you’ll build a solid habit that, over time, will shape your body beautifully. Keep believing in yourself, and keep grinding, brother.
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