5 Rules That Helped Me Stop Skipping The Gym and Build Consistency
Five habits helped me stop skipping the gym and break my inconsistent workout routine.
By Kelan Ern Updated: 05/11/25
Before college, I’d hit the gym 6-7 days per week.
After college it was a whole different story.
It became a real struggle to keep a consistent routine. Some weeks I’d crush it in the gym. Other weeks I skipped workouts or didn’t show up at all.
The result:
I got physically weaker
More injury-prone
Lost muscle mass
And became apathetic about my training
Whether it was too much on my plate… fighting off a bug… or just not feeling like it - when I finally returned to the gym it felt like I was starting all over again.
This start – stop – start overcycle killed my progress.
Here's the what helped me break this vicious cycle and stop skipping the gym and workouts in general. I call it the 5P's of Procrastinating Exercise (aka procrast-ercising)
Here’s what helped me break this vicious cycle and stop skipping workouts:
Postpone Entertainment Until After Exercise
Years ago, I got in a bad habit around 5:30pm each day.
I'd close shop for the day (aka shut my laptop), pull out my phone and check the latest news as a little reward. Just a few minutes of scrolling would turn into 15... 20... even 30 minutes. Then before I knew it, I was in a mental fog. and not in the mood to exercise. Any momentum grinded to a halt.
Eventually I created a mental rule:
No news (or social media) until after exercise.
At the end of the workday, I close my laptop, grab my water bottle and head straight downstairs to the home gym.
I ignore the voice in my head saying:
"I need to put my feet up" "I'm just going to check a quick story" "I'm just going to take 5 minutes to catch my breath"
Those are all mental traps for me. This 'siren song' would siphon my personal power and rob my action potential every time. If I need to decompress or unwind, I trust a walk or workout will do that 10x better than doom-scrolling ever will.
Might seem simple but this made a huge difference in boosting my show-up rate and sticking to my workout routine. In fact, it helps carry the momentum of the workday into my workout. Then the workout becomes a reward for a productive day.
And after the workout, if I want to plop on the couch and mindlessly check the local news, I can.
But you wanna know something funny?
This work-to-workout sequence has made even that less appealing. It made me wonder:
Is it possible the feeling I was after could be satisfied by movement alone?
Prepare Mental Fuel
Donna Jean Wilde is a 2x Guinness world record holder for holding a 4 hour and 30 minute front plank and doing 1,575 push-ups in one hour. On a recent Girls Talk Healthy podcast, she dropped an asteroid of wisdom.
She shared that she has two mental toolboxes:
What she is going to do that day (training)
What she is going to think about during her training
This could be memorizing songs, poems, quotes or passages from books.
“If we know that we want to have a good day every day, what are we going to load in our toolbox every day? Is it going to be exercise were loading in? Is it going to be inspirational reading? Is it going to be pondering? Is it going to be praying? Is it going to be service? What is it going to be so that you can make sure that you can be successful?”- Donna Jean Wilde
I’ve had seasons of pumping iron with podcasts… rock music… dead silence… and audio-programs. I knew a distance runner that would do math problems in his head during long runs.
Recently Joshua Duckworth shared how he dropped and incredible 45 pounds by:
Watching his calories and
Walking on the treadmill for 30 minutes five days per week.
His secret:
He watched his favorite TV shows during his walks. So he burned through Stranger Things… Better Call Saul… Breaking Bad… and Dexter.
All of this mental fuel can be powerful.
It’s just about having something queued up and ready-to-rock so you can trick your mind with something you already enjoy.
Pre-Written Workout
Sitting on the shelf in my garage gym is a small black notebook with a cover that says:" We’re grateful for you.”
It was a gift from two longtime clients and it's where I record all the workout magic. It's not an elaborate plan with everything mapped out for the next 12 months. But it guides my workouts each day and gives me a way to track (and look back) on my progress.
Tuesdays: Military Press, BB triceps extensions
Thursdays: DB Row, Pull-ups, Grippers
Too many people stumble into the gym thinking:
What am I going to do today?
Then they wander around the gym floor, hop on a few random machines and conjure up whatever is top-of-mind. But this floundering can feel like going through the motions. And this lack of direction can become a major barrier to showing up.
Whether your workout plan is on your phone, a flimsy folder or a 5-star notebook – having it pre-written removes friction to following through.
Clarity drives execution.
Permission to Cut Short (But Not Skip)
Back in 2013, when I worked a small local gym, one piece of advice I gave new personal training clients for their off-day workouts was The 5-Minute Rule:
Even if you don’t feel good or don’t feel like working out, come to the gym and start your workout. If you still don’t feel like it after 5 minutes then you can leave.
For most clients, this workouts like a lucky charm. Why? Momentum. Half the fitness battle is showing up. Once you arrive at the gym and change into your gym shorts, it's game on. You start shifting mental gears and enter workout-mode. Then when your heart starts pumping and your muscles warm up, you start feeling better - and then it becomes way easier to keep going.
And if after 5-minutes, you are still dragging or aren’t in the headspace to work out, you have permission to call it a day.
But most of the time, you won’t.
No Pressure to Break a PR Every Time
During my sophomore year of high school, I got serious about lifting weights. My mentality was to get bigger, faster and stronger for playing football. So I always pushed the iron envelope trying to bump my lifts and shave time off my 40-yard dash.
Years later, when I hung up my jersey, this mentality raged on. I'd put crushing expectations that every single workout needed to be my best. I felt the need to always break a personal record in military press... bench press... or squat. And if I didn't than it wasn't a "good workout".
But this mentality killed the enjoyment.
Eventually it dawned on me:
Training is not a test. Training is a stimulus.
If training is a test, it’s always a question of, “How am I measuring up?” Even if it’s not comparing to others, always comparing to your previous best can crush motivation.
If training is a stimulus, it doesn’t matter how you perform today. It matters that you show up and put in a full effort. The training becomes a stimulus for your body to build bigger, stronger muscles and come back more fortified and prepared for athletic battle.
This subtle shift was liberating. It released the pressure to constantly break records and instead find a more enjoyable experience with exercise. Plus, it created a training environment that I wanted to return to and give my best (whatever that looked like) with or without a PR.
The Gift of Skipping Workouts
Those rules helped me get my mind right, build consistency and stop slacking on workouts. And while your fitness journey might be different, here one last though:
My biggest breakthroughs in fitness have not come from:
New workout equipment
New training strategies
New nutrition strategies
But new levels of commitment and consistency.
"An average workout plan done consistently crushes a perfect plan done occasionally. Consistency eats complexity for breakfast."
There are many “orange cones” that can block your fitness journey. Sometimes they are physical. Sometimes mental. Every single time I’ve removed one blocking my consistency, it’s helped me regroup, speed up and breakthrough to new levels of performance. And new levels of fulfillment with the process.
Each obstacle is an opportunity.
If you crack the code on the obstacle in front of you – you’ll be stopped by one less thing. Do that over and over again with dozens of obstacles and eventually you’re virtually…
Unstoppable.
Each one you remove clears the path a little bit more.
What helps you show up consistency? What stops you from getting in motion?
Kelan Ern Elite Fitness Coaching
P.S. For weekly motivation to show up consistently, gain traction on your goals, and become unstoppable on your fitness journey, join the Mind-Body Breakthroughs Newsletter.
