Due to the nation wide lockdown, social distancing, and closure of gyms, your workout routine may have been disrupted... It’s also completely understandable if you’re lacking your usual motivation to work out. Although there is no right way to feel or act at the moment, it is crucial to maintain a healthy lifestyle by continuing to workout at home, now more than ever.
Despite all that's going on, you need to continue your fitness journey and adapt to this strange new world we now live in. Staying active with regular workouts at home is so important not only to preserve your physical fitness but also for your mental and spiritual wellbeing.
How to Stay Motivated to Workout at Home
While gyms and fitness studios are closed, it might be tempting to ditch your workout routine for a few days. By all means enjoy the rest when you need it, but just be careful not to fall off the wagon.
Believe me I've been there, just check out this before and after photo of me, I'd clearly disregarded my workout routine...
(On the right is me at the start of 2020 going into lockdown, and on the left is me in December!)
To fight a virus like COVID-19, safeguarding your health by staying strong physically and mentally is vital. Although Coronavirus continues to infect so many, thousands throughout the world have also recovered and returned to their normal lives.
It is our responsibility to do all we can to ensure our mind and bodies are in the best health by committing to strengthening our immune systems. No matter what age group or demographic you fall within, maintaining a healthy diet and engaging in regular exercise is the single best strategy.
So, here are four top tips that will help you find your motivation to work out at home and stay on top of your health.
Discover Your Motivating Factors
If you can’t find a strong motivating factor, keeping up a healthy lifestyle will be quite challenging. Short term motivators are unlikely to help and may result in resorting back to old ways. Some strong motivators can be,
- Disease prevention
- Maintaining a healthy weight
- Keeping your family healthy
- Being physically stronger and mentally calmer
- Setting a shining example for your children
These factors might not be as motivating for you as it may be for other people. However, the point is, you need to find your why. That reason which scares you into action, a reason which resonates with your inner being, and failure to comply is not an option.
Once you've found your why, sit down with a post-it note and a pen, then write down the key factors that motivate you to stay healthy.
Stick the post-it up on a mirror you look at every day. Whenever you feel like giving up, this simple note will work as a constant reminder as to why you are actually on this path to better health and fitness.
Boost Your Fitness with At Home Workout Plans
In lockdown, many fitness goals and normal workout routines have been put on pause, and working out might look a little bit different. It is now a necessity to workout at home and many people have taken up running, swimming, cycling as well as other creative fitness activities.
In order to stay motivated, you should start by setting yourself a target and defining a process that not only reflects your expectations but also matches your ability. Your fitness goal should be SMART, which stands for
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Realistic, and
- Timely
With a SMART goal, the chances of success are massively increased. When your goals are clear and detailed, this translates to an effective strategy and a better overall process. This will strengthen your mindset and prevent you from becoming demotivated.
Tip: Make your own home workout calendar and make sure you include a variety of activities. Check out my blog post on how to construct a highly effective training plan here.
Track Your Journey and Monitor Your Progress
If you need continuous motivation to workout at home, it is important that you keep a watchful eye on your health on a regular basis. There are some really great fitness tracker apps available which you can use to track and monitor your progress as you progress.
Using these apps, you can easily log the foods you eat, the exercises you perform, activity duration, and monitor your weekly or monthly progress.
I recommend investing in a Polar fitness tracker. They're amazing for tracking your heart rate, steps, calories and activity levels conveniently all from the Polar app. You can read more about the benefits of heart rate monitors in my other blog post here.
Trust me, once you start seeing improvement and feeling fitter, you will be inspired with much more workout motivation and your general motivation to workout will boost.
Tip: Check the progress at regular intervals and reward yourself for your efforts. Don’t be too hard on yourself.
Do More Calorie-Burning Chores!
When you’re at home, there can be plenty of distractions and no time left to exercise at the end of the day. In the sedentary lifestyles the majority of us live nowadays, it’s also pretty easy to avoid intense physical activity for an extended period of time, and hence miss out on the benefits of exercise.
Even if you have 5-10 minutes to spare in between tasks, use that to get in a quick home workout. Besides, you can always stay active with household chores. Working in the garden, dusting the furniture, washing the car, mowing the lawn, all these really do help you burn calories and impact your health. Just turn on the music and think of the broom as a barbell. This simple approach will not only boost your physical strength but also improve your emotional health.
Tip: Try to make it fun by being creative and choose the methods that excite you the most. A banging playlist also helps too!
Involve A Partner
A really effective way to maintain motivation to workout at home is by doing it with a partner. In this way, you will always have someone to call on and to keep you accountable. Not only that, if you start to lose motivation or feel down get down, that someone can help you through the tough time and motivate you to keep going. You can also include your family and friends in on it so that your journey becomes more exciting. The more people you get in on it the healthier your lifestyle will be.
Adjusting to a new exercise routine while staying motivated to workout at home is definitely challenging. But by planning out your time and finding your motivation, you’ll be able to stick to your fitness activities. If you need help creating an at home workout plan, check out the blog post on how to create an effective training plan.
So, if you are lacking motivation to workout at home, I hope this article has helped to explain that the way you feel is completely understandable. However, there are plenty of simple things you can do to find a workout routine that works for you and boost your motivation to workout at home.
See you in the next blog post!
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