Here’s How to Stick to Your Workout Routine this Summer

Between meals with friends, vacations, and pool days, we tend to relax more during the summer months. That’s not a bad thing, but it can trickle into your workout habits. If you’re noticing that your fitness routine is being negatively impacted, here’s how to get back on track. Try these tips to stick to your workout routine this summer.

Treat your workouts like a job

You’d probably never even consider showing up to work on Monday, blowing off the next few days, and then going on Friday just to go through the motions until you can leave. But if that sounds familiar, you may have done something pretty similar with your workouts. The truth is, many of us have trouble applying the same behavior – consistency, hard work, discipline – that serves us in the workplace to our health goals. Instead, we tell ourselves we’re “trying,” and leave it at that.

If we treated our jobs the way we do our fitness routines, we would be fired. And given our poor performance, that wouldn’t be a surprise! Work isn’t always stimulating and exciting, but that doesn’t keep us from showing up and doing our job. We achieve success in the gym by doing the same. When you treat your workouts like a job, you’ll reduce the odds that you’ll blow them off. Doing so risks the status of a very important project – your health! And there are long-term consequences to not maintaining a project like that.

Pro tip – Schedule your workouts into your calendar just as you do other important events and appointments.

Understand how motivation works

Motivation can be a great thing, but it’s critical to understand that it’s an emotion – and it works like one. Just as we can’t be happy or mad 24 hours a day, we can’t be motivated all of the time, either. Instead, we rely on habit to keep us going when motivation comes and goes. So how do you develop good habits?

A habit usually has of three parts:

• The cue, or the trigger setting your habit in motion.
• The routine, or the steps taken after the cue.
• The reward, or the reason for your habit.

Recognizing these three parts makes it easier to change bad habits – the ones that can result in those missed workouts – and fine-tune positive habits. By developing good habits related to health and fitness, and combining them with building your workouts into your schedule, consistency becomes that much easier.

Pro tip: Consider the benefits of working with a personal trainer. It’s a reliable way to develop good habits and start training yourself to schedule fitness, all while enjoying your trainer’s expertise. If you’re considering working with a trainer, we’re excited to answer your questions.