5 Effective Ways to Make Your Exercise Habit Stick 

Starting to exercise, much like any new habit you decide to incorporate into your life, may seem exciting at first. However, anything that becomes routine can start to feel boring, and it might take some motivation to keep going.

As far as exercising is concerned, a few small changes in your daily routine can help ensure that you’re never too unmotivated to hit the gym.

On that note, let's take a look at five tips that will help you stay consistent with your exercise regimen.

Before you begin, implement the following into your routine. Don’t wait to implement them when you feel low on motivation.

#1 Celebrate small milestones

Your mind is the biggest supporter when it comes to motivation or making a habit stick. Your body will follow through if your mind agrees to it. Therefore, you must do things that keep you happy. One of the best ways to keep yourself happy and motivated is to celebrate smaller milestones.

#2 Include rest days and cheat days

Now, while your mind plays an important role in staying motivated, your body shouldn’t be discarded. It’s important that when you incorporate a fitness regimen, you learn to listen to what your muscles and body are trying to tell you.

More often than not, individuals do not include rest days or cheat days to their routine, which results in burnout and extreme fatigue. Ideally, you should have at least one rest day every week and two cheat days every month. This will help your body recover and the cheat day will satisfy all cravings that you can’t indulge on a regular day.

#3 Set a goal

One of the reasons your exercise habit is not sticking is because you don’t have a goal. When you don’t have a goal in mind, you don’t know what you’re working towards. Therefore, you’re not focusing on progress.

It’s important to have a goal. You can add muscle mass or lose weight, but you need to have a goal. Everything you do after setting a goal should revolve around it in terms of what your weekly split will be, the diet you’ll follow, the type of workouts you’ll do, etc.

It’s important to set goals to make your exercise habit stick.

#4 Plan your daily workouts

Sometimes, our minds will not be at the gym even if you are physically there. This could be because you're feeling lost and are not exactly sure what to do in the gym.

If you plan your workouts, such as the exercises you’ll do, the sets and reps, the flow of the workout, and other elements such as core workout or cardio, it’ll keep you motivated to go to the gym. Since you’ve spent time on working out the day’s exercise chart, it’ll give you the push you need.

#5 Record your progress

One way to make sure your exercise habit stick is to record your progress. Every time you do a muscle group, note down your heaviest lift, note down the reps, the sets, and anything else you believe is noteworthy. This will allow you to track your progress and help you stay motivated.

In fact, tracking your progress is an extremely effective method of making your exercise habit stick.

Bottom line

There are other ways in which you can ensure that your exercise habit sticks. The above-mentioned points are the basics and will help you establish a foundation for how to keep yourself motivated over time.