How to Not Give Up on Working Out

Javier Colomer 8 min. of reading Well-being habits Leave a comment

We want to give you some of the top advice to help keep you motivated not to give up working out. And to always train with all your energy! You can accomplish your objectives.

At the beginning of the year, and before the start of summer, we all tend to make plans, some more elaborate than others. But in nearly every plan there’s the goal of getting in shape, whether that be by signing up to a gym or through training at home.

We might go as far as paying for a gym subscription, or even make room in our diary for a daily routine for home workout exercises through tutorials…

But when the time comes, there’s nearly always something that gets in the way of us achieving this objective.

Could we be self-sabotaging it?

Long-Term Objectives

Set a bunch of goals: lose weight, tone, sculpt, reduce cellulite, amongst others…

When stating to work out, it’s a great strategy to have clear goals, avoiding any unrealistic ideas. When you begin working out, its important to recognise your strong points and your weak points.

In general, in the short or medium term, the enemy to be defeated is laziness and/or lack of motivation.

We’ll find any excuse not to have to work out: I’ll start tomorrow, I don’t feel well, I’m exhausted, I need to go shopping, I have to clean the house… and so on. There’s always an excuse.

Principal reasons for giving up working out

Setting goals that are too high and unrealistic

And which end up just making us think about giving up working out…

It’ll mean that we have no desire to follow the routine and work to the rhythm kept up so far.

When we’re not sure of what we want, we don’t utilise the required resources efficiently (time, capacity, effort)..

Lack of self-confidence

If you have serious lack of self-confidence, you’ll undoutedly think about giving up…

Self-confidence, in this context, is about believing we’re capable of success when working out.

If we believe in ourselves, we can make a real commitment to changing our lives, rather than having self-confidence as a reason to give up.

Fear of failure

Many people decide to give up working out so they don’t have to go through the unpleasant experience of not achieving the proposed goal…

It’s one of the principal reasons for giving up working out low self-confidence is reinforced continuously, in general when trying to achieve goals.

Lack of planning

Workouts should always be directed by a professional or adapted to your abilities, limitations and goals.

Lack of understanding: a very common mistake is to arrive at the gym and do what we see the next person over is doing, a friend, what we’ve seen on the Internet, or what the monitor tells us to do, the same as everyone else.

On the other hand, there are people who never stop working out, under any circumstance, and there are also those who only workout from time to time, not as a result of them persevering, but instead only as a result of them waiting to being taken by a desire to do so.

How to find the motivation to work out

What can distinguish the people who achieve their goals from others is their conviction that they can achieve whatever they set out to do.

These people are consistent, persevering, with what is called willpower, and they’re clear on the fact that carrying out their workouts daily and overcoming the struggle is the key to success in everything we set out to do.

It’s difficult to explain, they themselves know they are capable of looking for and finding that motivation every day: keeping their goals in sight.

And as they achieve their goals, this motivation becomes even greater, it is self-feeding!

If you need a boost, I recommend you read the following post, where we talk about motivation to work out.

How to avoid giving up working out?

The first thing you have to do is analyse your situation, and then establish objectives and design your routine accordingly:

Set realistic objectives

First of all, your should be sure of the goals you’re setting (physical, mental, social, performance, amongst others).

You must be consistent with what you want to achieve, and not wander off into those things you dream about but may be impossible or that in reality you’re not ready to do.

This way, you’ll be able to develop during the year, achieving what you want and not giving up on working out.

Set objectives you know you’ll be able to achieve

Really get to know yourself

It’s important to really evaluate yourself, looking at your experience working out up to now.

Be clear about which days you can dedicate to exercise, the time you are going to be away for different commitments or your daily tasks, as well as the hours you’re going to dedicate to training.

Be aware

It may mean having to give up some other things. For example, if you want to lose weight, you can’t afford to eat out on anything every day.

Achieving anything requires effort

If you’re wanting to tone, you need to realise that without high intensity training you won’t get anywhere. Going to the gym to do light exercises serves no purpose.

Prioritise

In terms of your daily planning, you should order your priorities.

Establish what’s more important for your: your family, friends or training; and give each its required time. Adjust your aspirations and goals.

Family, work and friends are not incompatible with going to the gym and having a healthy routine, but dedicating the right amount of time to each requires good organisation.

If exercise is not as important to you as other activities, or if you feel that putting in hours of the day, the money, and all the work is unnecessary, it’ll be difficult to find the motivation, and you won’t be committed enough. This can be one of the causes of abandoning training..

Promise yourself

You need to be honest with yourself. If you feel motivated and capable of working out, which is a very big effort both physically and psychologically, or you’re not ready.

If you’re not fully committed and not in a position to perform your exercises, it’s best to be honest with yourself.

Don’t try to fool your trainer, you’ll only be fooling yourself

Conclusions

At this point, and after analysing everything, you need to establish what your strengths and weaknesses are. What’s your ready to do, or not.

After taking into consideration all of the above, you then need to get serious, hire a professional, agree on the work plan and get going! When we respect our rest, food and work schedules, we improve our physical and emotional ability.

For you to achieve real success, you need to be able to establish the days that you can do the workouts, and that the exercises that you are going to carry out and the time stipulated for each one of them is adequate to your reality.

It is essential that the exercises are adapted to your own path, the development you have accomplished before, and you’re current personal circumstances.

We hope this article has given you the motivation you need, the tips not to be overlooked and which should serve as a guide for you as to the principal causes of giving up on working out.

Good luck!

Bibliographic Sources

“Entrenamiento mental para optimizar el rendimiento” Steven Ungerleider
“Herramientas emocionales para correr ultratrails – ultracoaching” David Roncero
“Domina tu voluntad – Si quiero puedo” Victoria Cadarso
“Cómo entrenar la fuerza de voluntad” María Fernanda López
“Análisis de los motivos de retirada de la práctica deportiva y su relación con la orientación motivacional en deportistas universitarios” Maicon Carlin, Alfonso Salguero, Sara Márquez Rosa y Enrique J. Garcés – Universidad de León y Universidad de Murcia.

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