How to Actually Enjoy The Gym and Fall In Love With Fitness

Piggybacking off last week’s ‘gym vs. at home’ workouts, comes another timely question:

When will I start wanting to go to the gym?

According to this person, they've been exercising (somewhat consistently) five days per week  for the last few months and they HATE it. 

Reminds me of when an aspiring content creator asked for advice from a well-known podcaster. He described having made videos for four months and barely seeing any results. 

The podcaster replied:

“4 months! That’s it!? You aren’t even out the door yet!”

If you’ve only been working out for a few months, you aren’t out the door either (heck, you probably don't have your shoes on yet). 

Two months may feel like an eternity, and while we've all heard it takes 30 days to build a habit, there's research showing it can take up to 254 days! That's 8x longer to lay down the neurological wiring to make it automatic. So it's no surprise you haven't found a fulfilling relationship with exercise at this caterpillar stage. 

You’ve barely started.

Putting that fact aside...

Here are five motivation-blockers that could be getting in the way: 

Five Blockers of Gym Motivation

1. Your training volume may be too high – especially if you just started. You might find a better, more enjoyable (and sustainable rhythm) downgrading to three days per week. Maybe even two (like the weekend only workout program). Then upgrade once you psychologically manage that.
2. Your intensity may be too high – and so you are creating a negative association to working out and stepping into the gym in general. 
3. Your mindset. You can want to enjoy it all you want, but if you are silently telling yourself, this sucks… I hate this… why is this so hard… so you’re dousing any spark of enjoyment with your downpour of negative thoughts.
4. You might have unclear goals or a murky fitness vision that doesn’t inspire you and so you feel like you’re "going through the motions". 
5. You might have unreasonable expectations about how long it takes to reach your goals. You might believe you can just go beast-mode for a few months and then “be fit”. This is a rude awakening for anyone who’s tried. It’s not the path to any sort of lasting transformation.

 
One last thought:

Some people expect that they should love exercise and should want to do it and if they don’t they believe something is wrong.

Let that relationship naturally evolve.

It doesn’t just happen. It requires honesty, observation and self-reflection to find out what cadence and type of exercise works for you. You may despise the dreadmill and feel more at home with lifting free weights… holding planks in your living room...  or group exercise classes.

I don’t know.

But part of it is a discovery process.

Not forcing yourself to enjoy something, and when it's not, believing something is wrong or your aren't a "workout person". 

Kelan Ern
Elite Fitness Coaching 

P.S. For more ways to transform your health and fitness, check out a free issue of Mind-Body Breakthroughs. Each month features one of the fittest people on the planet and their tips, strategies and mindsets for helping you breakthrough to the next level.