10 Ways to Motivate Yourself to Workout

Encourage. Encourage.  That’s the secret.  Trainers are great because they push you when you no longer want to continue. “One more.  You can do it,” they say while your legs are shaking and burning.  So since we all can’t afford our own trainers to encourage and push us we need to be our own personal trainers.  It’s all about your attitude and how this in turn affects your actions.

How to Get Motivated to Work Out

1. Remind yourself it’s only a short chunk of time.   It’s only 15 or 20 minutes.  This helps put your workout into perspective of your whole day.
2. Remind yourself you’ll feel better when it’s done.  That pair of pants or dress you want to wear but don’t fit into: maybe that can be motivation enough by just looking at it.  I have a picture to motivate me of the look I’m striving for.  Thinking or looking at this picture motivates me because I’ll never get there if I make excuses.
3. Provide yourself a reward when you’re done. A smoothie, a massage, time to yourself. Anything that’s a treat for you but doesn’t negate the work you just did.  For me a nice hot shower is a relaxing reward.
4. Prepare yourself for success. Have all the items for working out ready to go and do errands/tasks that could get in the way before.   For me I need to get and go to bed earlier or I won’t have time.  I also have a work out ready I want to do so I can just get started and use my time more efficiently.
5. Have a good play list.  Nothing motivates me more to work out than a good music play list that I can dance and do workout exercises to.

How to Motivate Yourself During Your Workout

1. Set a goal.   Make sure it’s a goal you can reach.  ‘I’ll do two more.’  This pushes me to work beyond my comfort zone.
2. Encourage yourself .  ‘Almost done, 10 seconds left.’  How many times have you seen the workout instructors on tv and home videos say things like this?  It works though.  If you know you only have a short amount of time left it encourages you to keep going.
3. Remind yourself of the end result.  I hate burpees but I know I won’t see the results I want  if I don’t work hard so I do burpees and grumble, but I feel better when I’m done.
4. Use a heart rate monitor.  I love this.  I can check my heart rate and how many calories I’ve burned.  This helps keep me going because I can see progress.  It’s so exciting to finish an activity and see four hundred calories burned (a long walk). 
5. Start small.  After my c-section I couldn’t work out for 6 weeks so I walked a lot with my little one in the stroller.  As time went on I added body weight calisthenics.  Next I’ll incorporated HITT and weights.    I need to be good to myself and know that it’ll take time to regain muscle mass and lose the rest of the baby weight.  Every little bit counts.

May you reach your goal.

What do you do to motivate yourself?

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