Struggling to stay consistent with your workouts? Coach Sawyer shares 10 powerful tips to help you never skip the gym again! From finding non-food rewards and staying accountable to setting goals and using deload weeks effectively, these strategies will keep you on track and making progress. Whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned lifter, these tips will help you build long-term consistency.
Transcript:
Hey everybody, I’m Sawyer Hofmann and I’m a coach at VeganProTeams. Today we’re going to be talking about how to never skip the gym again. I just want to get right into it basically with the tips that I have assembled for this video because over my course of my time working with people and obviously having my own struggles and things like that, I’ve learned quite a bit and I want to just get to the heart of the matter Oh, and if you like fitness tips that are straightforward and very common sense, but also some that you might not expect, go ahead and give us a follow.
Tip number one is do exercises you enjoy. This is something I have to explain to clients day one pretty much because a lot of times they are used to being told like this is the best exercise for that and that’s mostly marketing to be honest. There are some good principles of what makes a good exercise like stability and progressibility and things like that.
Comfort is one, but a big factor that I think it’s undersold in a lot of circles is how much you actually enjoy doing it. If you enjoy doing it, not only will it help you work the muscles you’re trying to work, but you’re also going to be more likely to keep doing it. And so what I tell people is like muscle is contractile tissue.
It’s going to grow when you put progressively more and more attention into it, right? So we don’t have to overthink the mechanics, the biomechanics of exercise and things like that. At least not at first when we’re establishing a habit, right? We’re starting to get to these higher levels of things and we’re starting to notice like bottlenecks in certain areas. Yeah, sure.
But when you’re first starting to establish a gym habit, especially, especially make sure that you enjoy the exercises you’re doing. If you’re doing exercises just because you think that they’re the best or somebody told you they really like them one time or they explained the biomechanics to you and it all sounded good, take all that with a grain of salt and just remember that like at the end of the day, the best exercise is the one you do. Kind of like the best camera you could ever have is the one you have with you.
So for most people, that’s their phone. Just make sure that you’re enjoying the exercises you’re doing or at least not hating them. I think if you hate certain exercises, definitely don’t make yourself do them.
Find other ways to work those muscle groups. You might not love working certain muscle groups, but at least don’t make it the worst possible scenario by doing exercises you hate. Tip number two, track your progress.
Do it in a way that excites you. When you don’t track anything, when you don’t pay attention to objective metrics of success, at first you can keep going like that for a while, but I think without any feedback as to whether things are going well or not, it’s very hard to stay motivated and I’m no different. I need things to tell me that I’m doing well if I want to keep feeling motivated to keep going.
I would recommend establishing some of those. With that said, you don’t need to track things that you hate tracking. For instance, if you hate taking progress pictures and you just think it’s the most unflattering thing ever, I would push back on that a little bit because I think that it can help put a barrier up to you seeing yourself in a bad picture and thinking that’s how I really look to everybody.
You have a more objective way of looking at that and your improvement. But with that aside, if you hate doing that process and you don’t feel rewarded by that and you feel like it’s just a depressing time of the week or time of the month or whatever where you’re just looking at the results that you wish you had or it’s really hard for you, step away from that for a while at least. There was a time in my journey where stepping on the scale was really, really scary and so I stopped doing it for a while and I started focusing on performance metrics like I want to get stronger and that really helped me get outside my head a little bit but still focus on objective things that were getting better and it felt good.
I think, yeah, if you don’t set metrics that particularly the ones that you like, you know, doing the gym, going to the gym, having a routine is going to feel just kind of like, I don’t know, brushing your teeth. It’s just kind of a preventative measure so you don’t die or, you know, get disabled sooner than you, you know, we all will eventually. If you’re struggling with motivation and inspiration in particular, I think tracking your progress in some way, shape or form, whether that be body weight, progress pictures, strength progressions, measurements, all that stuff is great as long as you like it but I would recommend having something, something to tether your excitement about your progress too.
Three, do it when you have the most energy in the day. For most people, that’s kind of first thing in the morning. They have not been beaten down by the weight of the day yet and if you, because if you save it for last and you just are like hoping that you have enough energy by the end of the day, chances are you’re probably not going to do it.
So that doesn’t have to mean the morning. It could be lunch break or something like that. It could be, you know, you simply work out on the days that you have a lighter workload and you do it like mid-morning or something like that, whatever.
It just needs to happen at a time of day where you have the most energy and there’s the least resistance, there’s the least friction within you to go and do something that’s, you know, for lack of a better word, a chore. It’s not going to ever feel like it’s nothing, right? Workouts are hard. They need to be to make you better but you don’t need to do them in the worst possible conditions, which is like when you’re already tired, when you’re already hungry, when you’re already just not feeling like doing it.
So or you’re already just feel like you’ve done a bunch of stuff you didn’t want to do that day and then you try to pile that on at the end. It’s not going to be very easy to convince yourself. So I recommend doing it either first thing in the morning if that’s not too painfully early for you or saving it for a day or a time where you just have the most energy and you realize you notice this pattern recognition of, yeah, you know, around 10 a.m. I have the most energy and if I can clear my schedule for an hour, I can do it here and then I can do it on the weekend at that time.
You know, there’s three days right there. Here’s a big one. If you hate the gym for any reason, like any reason, it doesn’t even have to be understandable to anybody else, then I recommend you get a home equipment of some kind.
You know, there’s lots of reasons to hate the gym. There’s salesy trainers. There’s, you know, creepy people.
There’s gross equipment. There’s loud noises. There’s no space.
It’s cramped, especially after New Year’s like right now. I think there’s a lot of reasons to not like the gym. So instead of, you know, if you’ve, if you tried it and you’re just like, that’s not for me and that’s a lot of people, then getting yourself some equipment at home can really, really help you get things in throughout the day or whenever you do like to work out.
Most things I like to program for people can be done with an adjustable bench and adjustable dumbbells. I say adjustable because they save a lot of space, right? You wouldn’t have to get several different benches and several different dumbbells. They are a little bit more pricey than the standard dumbbells, but they go a long way.
They won’t take up too much space in your home and you can do a lot with them. For example, hip thrusts, squats, split squats, lunges, chest supported rows, lateral raises, skull crushers, curls. You can work every single muscle in your body with dumbbells and a bench.
So I usually start there with people. The next thing I would probably recommend is getting a pull-up bar of some kind or like a lat pull-down ideally. Cables would be amazing, but that’s such a whole setup thing.
Yeah, I would say get adjustable bench, adjustable dumbbells, and maybe over the doorframe pull-up bar. I think that could be a really, really good solid beginner setup for working out. One that will allow you to get stronger and progressively overload without having to do more time and effort in terms of doing a bunch more reps and stuff like that.
For instance, if you had done push-ups instead. Number five is going to be creating a rule for yourself. And that could look a bunch of different ways.
When I work with my clients, it’s called focus lifts. And so I’ll highlight certain lifts in their program, which will encourage them to say, hey, you know what? I don’t have to do all of these. I just have to do the focus lifts bare minimum, right? And so that’ll usually be anywhere from like two to four exercises or something like that.
And that will kind of get them their foot in the door and get them to realize like, oh, okay, I only have to do this much like minimum. And then if I still feel good, I’ll go for the whole thing. And this can help really alleviate the all or nothing mindset that often comes with like programming things for people and people feeling like they have to do everything in a certain timeline.
Or if they don’t have enough time in that day to do everything, then they don’t show up at all. I want to kind of get away from that idea that there’s no benefit to doing just something. Another way that you could phrase this rule is the 10 minute rule, where you decide, oh, I’m going to do at least 10 minutes of working out today.
And it doesn’t have to look exactly the same every time, but you promise yourself you are going to work out for 10 minutes. Another one is just promising yourself you’re going to go to the gym. Like even if you don’t think you’re going to have a good workout or you don’t even think you’re going to do anything, just getting to the gym or just going walking into your home gym maybe is something you promise to yourself.
And once you’re there, it’s a hell of a lot easier, especially if you have to drive to the gym. It’s a hell of a lot easier to get yourself to do something rather than nothing, right? So we have to get out of our heads a little bit sometimes and realize that not everything, conditions don’t always need to be perfect for us to have at least a good enough workout. And that’s going to, more than anything, even more than the physiological changes that that spurs, it’s going to help keep the habit intact.
And that’s really, really important. If you guys know, momentum is so important when it comes to fitness and this can keep the momentum going. There’s this like psychological buildup I’ve found when people don’t work out for a while, when they don’t stick to their program or when they don’t do anything for a while, where they just feel like they’ve been out of it too long or they just feel like this sense of shame or guilt.
And no matter how much I try to convince them, like it’s okay to take breaks. They know at the end of the day that they want to move and they want to do things consistently. And so, you know, they have to get used to the idea that it’s not always going to be perfect when they’re doing that stuff, right? And they’re not always going to feel energized and they’re not always going to have enough time and things like that.
So if you just promise yourself, like I’m always going to go in and at least do this thing, right? Just set a rule for yourself on a certain day or whatever, a certain number of times per week. More often than not, you’ll be able to get in there and do a pretty good workout. But even if you don’t, you’re going to keep the habit intact and that’s really important.
Tip number six, reward yourself. Sometimes you might notice that it’s hard to get yourself to just feel excited about working out and rewards can look a whole lot of different ways. Like for one, you could get a smoothie afterwards or something like that.
But, you know, if that’s kind of an expensive way to reward yourself, you can find other ways. Like for me, I reward myself with kind of like a photo session after each workout. So you’ve probably seen on my Instagram posts and things like that where I’m just like flexing the mirror or I’m doing different poses or I’m practicing things or I’m looking at my body in different ways.
To me, that feels like a reward for working out hard and like getting that pump and like seeing how it looks, you know? And it feels fun. It feels like something to look forward to. And I didn’t even really plan this.
This just kind of happened naturally, I guess, because, you know, I’m vain or whatever. But it’s fine. I honestly don’t feel bad about it.
And I, you know, you don’t have to post it or anything like that. But I think having something that you look forward to after the workout or during the workout or whatever is probably going to help you stick to it a little bit more. I’ve noticed that I have better body image days if I do not only work out, but I look at myself afterwards and I remind myself like, look at all the hard work you put in.
You know, this looks good. OK, let’s work on this a little bit more. But it’s like it’s better for my mental health to do that, especially if I’m not feeling that connected to my body or that cognizant of what I want to do.
Tip number seven, realize that you don’t actually need to do that much exercise to maintain your muscles. For most people, three good sets per muscle group per week is going to help them maintain or if not improve their body composition, depending on how good those sets are. But at least you’ll be able to maintain, most people will be able to maintain the muscles that they have with three good sets per week per muscle group.
And that’s really encouraging because that’s not that much work. I mean, there’s only a few, you know, a handful of major muscle groups that you need to work and three sets is not that many. So if you, you know, say you broke that up, you’re having the craziest week of your life and you broke that up by doing, you know, two exercises a day, you wouldn’t even need to do like a full week of exercise.
Like you could just do probably four or five days, not even to just really maintain. And the point of saying that is, look, we can sometimes convince ourselves that like if we can’t do like the most or that what we’re used to or what we can do in college or whatever we had free time for in the past, if we don’t have time for that, it’s not worth it and we won’t make progress and all this stuff. One, tracking your metrics will help you prove that wrong.
But two, science says, yeah, that’s really not the truth. And if you just do the bare minimum some weeks, when you really feel like you need to put it back to that, dial it back, then do that, right? Do three sets a week per muscle group and notice that, okay, I’m not going backwards. So that’s good.
And you can feel like you’re maintaining what you got at least. And then when the weeks you have more energy and you have more focus, you can put more effort into them and especially certain muscle groups that you want to bring up. Tip number eight is to have somebody you’re accountable to.
So it doesn’t need to be a coach, but a coach is a great way to do it because you’ll make sure that you’re going to have somebody that’s literally being paid to keep you accountable and can help you also fix things and relate about certain experiences and give you ideas. But also, that’s what friends are for. Having a friend who you know will hold you accountable, but not be rude, not be shameful or anything like that.
Just say, hey, you know, you said you want to do this, let’s go, let’s do this. And it has a pretty good attitude about it. I think that those tend to be the most people, the best people to confide in, you know, different fitness goals.
So yeah, so either a coach or a personal friend that you feel like is helpful in helping you keep habits intact. But sometimes those are hard to find and a coach is really probably the best option for a lot of people. So if you’re looking for coaching, we got you, veganproteins.com. Check us out.
Number nine, and this one is a little bit more niche, but some people get really motivated for like events, you know, like they set up a race or they set up a bodybuilding show or they set up a, you know, reunion or something like that. And they kind of fixate on this point in the future. Of course, the downside of that is like once that pressure is off, you might find that you have a little bit harder time adhering to your goals.
The other downside is that, you know, there’s kind of related, which is that you can, if you put an event on a pedestal and you say this is going to be awesome and then it doesn’t pan out the way you want or you don’t, things don’t work out the way you want, you could be eroding your confidence a little bit for the future, especially because it’s such a fickle thing. Like, you know, if you go to a reunion and nobody comments on how good you look and that was like your whole goal. It’s like, you know, like maybe we should focus on some things that are more like predictable and helpful than people commenting because that’s stuff you can never control.
But for some people still, it’s good to set an objective date where you’re going to do something by and also set a goal for yourself. Like saying, for instance, oh, I’ve been able, the fastest I’ve ever been able to run a mile is this. On this day, I’m going to run a mile with these people and see how fast I can go.
Join a running club, whatever. Because yeah, then you have some more people invested and you’ve also put it out to the universe that you want to beat your previous self or you want to do this one thing. I think that can be a really good thing for focusing people who have a hard time deciding on things, right? You’ve got this impending event and there’s no getting out of it and it can really help hold you accountable to what you said you weren’t going to do.
Tip number 10, deload when you need to. For those of you who aren’t familiar, deloading just means that you take, usually it’s about a week, where you do less. You do actively, you’re actively trying to rest, basically.
You do less than you would normally do. In fact, you’re trying to avoid most exercises that are very strenuous. So you’re not trying to do intense HIIT cardio.
You’re not trying to do intense exercise. You can still go through the motions of doing your routine at the gym if you want or in the weight room. You can do that if you want.
I personally like to do that most weeks because it kind of makes sure that I’m still using the right form and I’m using lighter weights maybe sometimes or I’m just avoiding feeling like a slob because I can kind of feel like that if I don’t move. So I’m still doing those things that are healthy and that are moving, but I’m intentionally holding back. I’m trying to avoid those like really grinder type reps because I know that those are going to be very central nervous system fatiguing.
Those are going to take a toll on my joints and those are going to take a toll on my muscles that… At that point, I probably need to rest, right? And that’s the key point is that deload should only be used when you’ve just noticed you’ve overreached a bit. Your joints are feeling beat up. Your muscles are feeling beat up.
Your hormones are a little bit wacky. Whatever’s going on, you’re going to want to deload because of that. And there’s no blueprint to deloading.
It’s just get some active activity in, but don’t go too hard where you need to like spend days recovering like normal training, right? Last thing I’ll say about that is that deloading should not be necessary too frequently. If you need to do it more than every, say, six weeks or so, I’d say you probably need to change your programming or your habits because you’re probably breaking yourself down a little too much, a little too intensely, too frequently. We want to make training in a way such that we are able to recover and come back stronger, right? If you are trying to beat yourself up at the gym every time or really, really push yourself to the point where you’re coming back a little bit weaker each week and then the deload is the only way that you get out of that cycle, I think you need to take a look at your programming and reduce the dosage of the stress, balance that stress equation, meaning we want to come back stronger.
We don’t want to come back weaker or poorer performance, right? So that’s the last caveat I would say on deloads is just make sure that if you have to do them more than every six weeks or so, maybe a month tops, then maybe think about programming, you’re making your programming a little bit easier or ergonomic. Sometimes people choose exercises that are really tough on their joints and they do a lot of them, but that’s less frequent because most people can feel that and adjust away from it pretty quickly. It’s more often that people are just doing too much systemically to be able to maintain that for a longer period of time and that’s more indicative of they need a program change.
Okay guys, well that’s it for today. Thank you for tuning in. I hope that these 10 tips helped you never skip the gym again.
If you’re looking for more training advice, please give us a follow. If you want to look into our one-on-one coaching, check out veganproteins.com. Again, my name is Coach Sawyer and I have been pleased to help you today. Hopefully it’s been helpful.
Don’t forget to like, subscribe and we’ll see you in the next one. Bye.
