3 Reasons You Can’t Maintain Your Gym Routine & How To Fix Them

I signed up for a 3 months gym subscription, but I only went for 2 days and stopped. Here’s what I learned

Everybody wants to look good, and if you are like everybody, you want to look good too.

Exercise and fitness have taken off for 2 reasons. On the one hand, are the aesthetic benefits; you want to get the right muscle tones, shape, or build your body according to your tastes. On the other hand, is the health benefits. As people have gotten more aware of dieting and diseases, exercise and fitness have become popular as a way to stay healthier.

As an added advantage, working out is very fashionable. You can take videos and pictures which are very Instagram-able.

If you are health-conscious or very aware of your physique, the odds are that you’ve used the gym before, or still do. I don’t consider myself over-conscious of my physical image, but I decided to make a gym subscription for reasons best known to the universe.

The gym I chose had a 3 monthly subscription package and it offered the best value for money, so I went for it.

Guess how the story ends. I went the first day, and again 3 days later. I’ve never set foot in a gym afterwards. From my failure, I learned some lessons which I want to share with you to save you from making the same mistakes that I did.

Let’s get right to it.

You Start the Gym for the Wrong Reasons

Remember I said I started the gym for reasons best known to the universe?

To be fair to the universe, that’s not actually how it happened. I decided to go to the gym mainly to support a friend. He needed a gym partner as a motivation, and he convinced me to join.

This was a huge mistake. In retrospect, it’s obvious that I started at the gym for the wrong reasons. I didn’t start because I had a personal motivation or saw the need for it. Rather, I only went in solidarity with a friend. How naive I was!

Even if I started for the wrong reason, I still could own the process by finding my motivation along the way, but I didn’t do that either.

When you have a strong reason to take on a task, it’s more difficult to quit. Having the right reasons provides you with a sense of purpose which will act as a driving force till you’ve accomplished the goals you set.

What can be considered the right or wrong reasons for starting at the gym? — You are the only person who can genuinely answer that question. We are all different, and our motivations and interests differ, which means that a healthy motivation for starting the gym for me might not be the same for you.

Motivations centred around health reasons are the healthiest. Working out to impress a person or as a way to escape problems in your personal life are examples of really bad reasons for going to the gym.

You Take On a Lot Too Quickly

In a classic sign of my naivety, I started the gym with heavy weights and difficult reps. I started my gym routine like a person who wasn’t a newbie like I had a lot of experience under my belt already. Do you know that newcomer who goes straight for the 100kg dumbells? That newcomer was me.

This is a mistake a lot of people make, you might have even made it too. You think that the harder and more intense the gym routine, the more effective it is.

Nothing can be further from the truth!

If you are new to the gym, your body needs some time to adapt to the new routines. The best advice is to take it slow and easy, and then build up the intensity and duration of your routines as you progress on your fitness journey. If you don’t know how to pace yourself, consider working with a personal trainer. Their job is to help you create routines that are tailored to your current fitness level.

You Hate Your Gym Routine

How can you possibly keep doing something you don’t like? If every time you think about going to the gym you sulk, and wish you didn’t have to go, that’s a huge red flag.

Observe people who get the most benefits from the gym. They are usually crazy and hyped about their gym routines. They talk about it any chance they get, they can’t wait to get off work and hit the gym.

When going to the gym or starting your regular exercise routine becomes a burden for you and doesn’t give you joy, it’s time to ask yourself serious questions. It may be that your routines aren’t the right ones for you. Fortunately, there are different exercise routines you could try that might work for you and achieve the same goals you want.

You can work with a fitness trainer to draw up the right exercises that fit your goals and fitness levels, and that you can enjoy too. Keeping fit is a serious business but it shouldn’t be a burden, it’s important and more effective to have fun while at it.

Closing

I dream that one day in the future I’ll go back to the gym and give it another try. It’s still a dream but it’s I can feel it in my bones that it’s inevitable. My first experience was a failure, but I take solace in the fact that I’ve learned from my mistakes and I’ll do better next time.

On this note, here is my love letter to the gym;

Dear gym,

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice,….no you can’t!