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| Positive Article |
Get Motivated to Exercise
By Tim Wilke
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You don’t need to be convinced that exercise is good for you. You know it is. What you need is a reason to choose exercise over some of the other options you have in your life. Goal setting is a simple way to motivate yourself to exercise, but some goals are more effective than others. Here are some tips on establishing a goal that will help you enjoy the many benefits of fitness:
1. Challenge yourself. Set a personal goal detailing an amount of exercise to do in a set amount of time. Make sure that your goal is realistic for you, but challenging at the same time. Your goal should be hard enough that achieving it will significantly improve your fitness.
2. Give your goal an end date. There is a problem with challenging yourself to workout for 30 minutes 3 times a week. The first week that you don’t exercise 3 times, you will be a failure. A much better challenge would be to exercise 30 minutes an average of 3 times a week for the next 10 weeks. This, in essence, makes it your goal to do 30 workouts in 10 weeks. If you are sick one week and only get to workout once, you have not failed. You just need to make up those missed workouts before the end of your challenge. You are still in the game.
This example would certainly meet the criteria of being hard enough to significantly improve the fitness of a person who had been living a sedentary lifestyle. Also, there is a good chance that a person who had done 30 workouts in 10 weeks would have successfully made exercise a part of his or her life.
3. Track your progress. Of course, you will want to keep track of your workouts as you strive to reach your goal. There is something very satisfying about dragging your sweaty self over to your calendar or computer and logging the workout you just completed.
4. Allow cross training. Notice in the example above that the requirement is to exercise for 30 minutes. It doesn’t say walk or run or do an elliptical trainer for 30 minutes. By limiting yourself to a single mode of exercise you are setting yourself up for failure (e.g. your elliptical trainer breaks down), overuse injury from the repetitive motion, and insanity (I would go crazy if I had to do the same workout day after day).
5. Reward yourself. Fitness is its own reward, but it doesn’t hurt to add to the motivation value of your personal goal by dangling a carrot at the finish line. Perhaps the prospect of a spa retreat would get you off the couch those times when you just don’t feel like exercising.
If you are just starting an exercise program, you should see your doctor to make sure you are able to do any particular method of exercise. Once you are cleared, set yourself a challenging, but realistic goal and start seeing what is different in your life when regular exercise is a part of it. Good luck!
Author's Bio
Tim Wilke is a personal trainer and massage therapist who lives in Phoenix, Arizona with his wife and two daughters. His recreational activities include basketball and tennis and his favorite workouts are trail runs through the Phoenix Mountain Preserve.
Tim has developed an exercise motivation program called The Mile Club Challenge in which participants challenge themselves to go 100, 200, 300, 400 or 500 miles in 100 days using almost any mode of exercise. http://www.mileclubchallenge.com
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