Until working out becomes truly habitual, it’s always going to take effort to get into the gym. Every day, you face the challenge of trying to motivate and persuade yourself to show up to the gym, and even if you’ve been consistently working out for a couple weeks or even months, it’s still not a guarantee that the streak will continue; any small disturbance still poses the risk of killing all the momentum you’ve built up.
So what does it mean for exercise to be a fully ingrained part of your life? In this post, I’ll go over some of the main ways you can tell that working out has finally become routine for you.
1. You Don’t Need to Be Persuaded to Work Out
When you’re trying to build consistency with your workouts, a lot of factors can influence your success. There are physical factors, like how tired you are. There are emotional factors, like how happy or sad you might be feeling. There are also mental factors, like how much motivation you have. These can either keep your fitness dreams alive or make you abruptly abandon them.
On the other hand, when working out is embedded into your daily routine, your ability to continue showing up to the gym is no longer dictated by these aforementioned factors. There’ll inevitably be days when you feel sluggish, lack motivation, or aren’t in the best of moods, but that won’t derail you from sticking to your training schedule as you’ll still find yourself showing up to the gym.
In fact, the question of whether or not to work out won’t really ever enter your mind at all. Instead, going to the gym will almost be like the default setting for your brain, so it’s something you’ll do without needing to make a conscious decision.
2. You Always Make Time for the Gym
When working out is routine, it also changes how you value exercise. Prior to this, going to the gym might have been more of an afterthought, and something you did if you happened to have time. Any potential obstacles that came about, however, would take precedence, and as a result you might’ve frequently found yourself not having enough time to work out.
Now, the gym is something you’ll actively make time for even when conflicts arise, and isn’t something you’ll easily give up on. You’ll find ways to get a workout in even when your schedule gets busy. You won’t skip the gym when there’s inclement weather unless the gym itself closes due to it. When you’re traveling for work or leisure, rather than using that as an excuse to skip your workouts, you’ll use hotel gyms and sign up for day passes at gyms near you whenever you can.
Instead of your workout always being pushed to the bottom of your to-do list, it’s now something you’ll heavily prioritize. With that, you’ll likely also find that making time for the gym has become a lot easier, because as the saying goes, where there’s a will, there’s a way.
3. You Feel Uncomfortable Skipping the Gym
Lastly, when you’re so used to going to the gym and being able to fit it into your schedule, on the rare occasions when you aren’t able to work out, you’ll feel off. Despite most people having trouble staying disciplined and consistent with exercise, not being able to work out is what throws off your sense of routine and normalcy. As a result, all you’ll want to do is get back in the gym the next day.
The longer you’re forced to skip the gym, the more this urge will intensify. While for others who are still trying to build a routine, each consecutive day they don’t work out makes it less and less likely that they’ll ever resume, it’ll be quite the opposite for you. It’ll be like experiencing a form of withdrawal: each passing day that you can’t work out will only make you more eager to get back to your training when you’re finally able to return to the gym.
Now Your Fitness Journey Really Begins
Firmly establishing an exercise routine can be a monumental challenge. It almost seems up to pure chance whether your brain will be able to flip the switch that turns working out from something you must deliberately maintain to something you do subconsciously. Even if you actively seek ways to turn exercising into a habit, there’s no saying how long this process might ultimately take. Luckily, if you’ve begun to show some of the signs above, then having fitness and exercise cemented as core elements of your lifestyle is in the very near future, if they haven’t already been.
At this point, keeping up your fitness routine won’t require nearly as much effort, and the risk of you not being able to maintain your training in the long run will likely be pretty low. Instead of having to worry so much about simply getting to the gym every day, you’ll now be able to spend that effort on actually working towards your fitness goals when you’re there.
