Why You Can’t Stick To Your Exercise Routine

How often have you tried to get in shape in your life? Have you purchased gym memberships with high hopes for the changes you’re about to make, but find yourself calling customer service two months later to cancel? Did you try out that boot camp that promised it would help you lose 25 pounds in a month, and then left soon after you hit the goal? Is there a pile of exercise equipment sitting in a closet somewhere in your home, gathering dust and taunting you from the darkness?

If you have any experiences like these over your lifetime, and still can’t seem to stick with exercising long enough to see results, here’s why.

You’re going about it all wrong.

At this point, it’s no secret that exercise is a critical part of our health and wellness, with study after study reminding us that consistent, rigorous exercise is key to developing strong bones, balanced hormones, and a happier quality of life. But why is it so difficult for us to commit to something that’s so universally understood to be vital to our health and happiness?

The problem lies in how we set goals, and how that creates poor expectations.

As a personal trainer, part of the certification process involved learning about SMART goals, and how to apply them to your clients, so that they set “realistic and attainable goals”. For those of you who don’t know what SMART goals are, here’s the breakdown:

• Specific: Create clarity on what you want to achieve. (IE, lose weight)
• Measurable: Make sure that what you want to achieve has an aspect that is traceable. (IE, lose X amount of pounds)
• Attainable: Be sure to set a goal that can be accomplished by someone in your current position. Start small, build up. (IE, lose 10 pounds a month)
• Realistic: Set proper expectations for your outcome. Avoid over extending, or setting impractical goals. (IE, learn to make one new homemade meal a month, instead of quit ALL junk food right now, forever!)
• Time-Constrained: Set a time limit on your goal, with each of the earlier steps working into that time frame reasonably.

Now, on the surface, this system looks not only reasonable, but optimal, right? Setting goals that you can reach, with traceable metrics and sensible demands. What’s not to love?

The issue is, all these concepts are good, but they aren’t necessary. They set you up for short-term results, but they don’t touch on the most important factor of success in any new venture.

Unexpected events.

I’ve set up hundreds of SMART goals with dozens clients with the best of intentions, and of those dozens of people, I have known 3 who stuck with the plan long enough to actually achieve those goals. None of them still exercise since discontinuing work with me after the pandemic. Why is that? Everything is in place for success with SMART goals, what went wrong?

Life went wrong.

You see, exercise, like any other hobby, passion, or effort in our life, is subject to the reality each of us faces. Something difficult or stressful will always arrive in our lives, and demand our attention, pulling us away from what we know we should do, but can’t seem to budget the time or energy for anymore. Here lies the downfall of goal setting. It doesn’t help us turn exercise into a habit.

Think about all the different activities you do in your day to day life that you give no conscious effort toward. Tying your shoes, backing out your driveway, brushing with your dominant hand, resting on a certain hand when you’re bored, grabbing coffee on the way to work. None of these events add stress to your life or create an energy demand that you can’t keep up with. They’re automatic.

THAT is the “goal” we need to have for exercise. To never need a goal again. Turning exercise, in whatever form you want it to be, into a habit, is the smartest way to stick with it through all the hurdles life will inevitably throw your way.

Whether you have new kids, live in a different town now, or a global pandemic kicked you out of your local gym. If, instead of chasing “weight loss challenges”, you turned fitness (better understood as ANY form of movement that you love to do) into a process of starting small, and sticking with it? You would find that the results of losing weight, fixing your chronic pain, and feeling more confident come naturally, and consistently. No more setting goal after goal that you never fully reach, and becoming discouraged by all the metrics you keep failing at!

Stop chasing goals. Start building routines that become automatic. Instead of looking for coffee to wake you up, leave your shoes by your bed, and start walking for 5 minutes outside. Do that for two months, and notice how after while, you don’t even have to think about it. It happens automatically.

Automate your health. Build habits of movement, and then build on those habits to create progress. Enjoy the freedom millions others have, by removing goals, and finally doing what it takes to become healthy.

I’ll be teaching you exactly how to do this, so stick around.