Did you ever have this conversation with yourself?
SELF 1: “It’s time to work out, but I have other stuff to do.”
SELF 2: “Sure I have other stuff, but I need to get my workout in!”
SELF 1: “Good point, but I already missed Wednesday, because of that big meeting. Might as well skip today, too, and get back into it on Monday.”
There are always things that can happen to take the place of your regular workout time. The boss calls a meeting. You get stuck on the phone with a client. Your kid is sick and you need to pick her up from school. Life gets in the way.
But if you are committed, what you do is shift the workout, do it anyway, earlier, later, whenever. If for some reason you really can’t get your workout in that day, you do it the next day.
And you never — never — use the fact that you missed the last workout as an excuse to miss the next one. That is a recipe for failure.
No matter how many days a week you plan to exercise — 1, 3, 5, 7 — you gotta stick to the schedule!
Have you seen the infomercial for Tony Horton’s P90X that includes the tagline/motto “Press play every day”? That is a powerful idea. The P90X program has something for you to do every day of the 90 days it lasts. Okay, well, one day a week is optional — you can either rest or join Tony in a stretching routine, so, really, they do allow you a day off every week, if you choose — and that’s a good thing.
But the idea that I needed to put that DVD into the player and “press play every day” — that little mantra — kept me going from time to time on those days when I was not so motivated, by reminding me of my commitment to P90X. In fact, it still reminds me now to get a workout in, long after having completed the program.
The financial gurus always tell you to prioritize your savings plan by “paying yourself first,” before all the money goes to bills.
Do the same with fitness. Prioritize it. Put your workout time above other things that are pulling at you. When you do that, you’ll find yourself truly committed to fitness, and that’s the only way you’ll succeed in the long run.