Tips for Establishing a Physical Fitness Habit

Everyone is aware that physical exercise comes with all sorts of assorted health benefits, as well as being able to boost mood, and leads to a variety of other positive effects. Part of the issue, though, is that actually getting a regular fitness habit established can be a lot easier said than done—and if you doubt that, just look at how many people turn up to the gym each January versus how many are still there by April. Here are some tips to help you avoid a particular stumbling block, and get a good fitness habit established.

Use Garments and Accessories to Get In the Zone

Getting some gym-friendly clothes and accessories, such as high waist scrunch leggings, can be a great way of solidifying a commitment to working out, and motivating you to have the sense of identity that can help you not only get to the gym, but keep you coming back again and again. As human beings, we all tend to be influenced a lot by the symbolic value of things. We also tend to shape our behaviour around who we think we are, deep down. The writer James Clear, author of the book Atomic Habits specifically recommends that we should look at each repetition of a habit as a 'vote' for a certain sense of identity we are trying to create and reinforce. So, for example, each visit to the gym will help you to reinforce a sense of your own identity as a gym person. Fitness-related garments and accessories can help to achieve the same thing, in a slightly different way.

Start Small, Just Be Consistent

One thing that you will consistently find in books on creating enduring habits is an emphasis on the importance of starting small and never burning yourself out—particularly in the early stage when you are trying to get the habit established. Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit argues that, when trying to establish a fitness habit, the daily habit we start with should be something so easy that it's virtually impossible to fail at. For example, simply putting on your running shoes whether or not you actually go for a run. The idea is that you start laying the foundations of the habit in the simplest way possible. Then, you can become more ambitious once those foundations have been laid.

Find Exercises That You Enjoy Doing

A lot of people struggle with trying to establish fitness habits, partly because they end up forcing themselves to do exercises that they essentially hate—which, of course, makes the whole thing much more difficult to stick with. Instead of letting yourself end up in this situation, find exercises that you actually enjoy doing—whether that means joining a dance or yoga class, or doing calisthenics at home. You can also book your schedule using gym booking software at a gym and then find a personal trainer to help you assess your fitness status and provide you with programs that will suit your body needs.

There are, after all, large numbers of different ways to exercise.