My hus­band & I went through many attempts to exer­cise reg­u­lar­ly. It only took a pan­dem­ic to final­ly stick to a work­out routine.

Some of the things we’d tried — and failed.

Going to a gym. We’re intro­vert­ed, so going to the gym where we felt peo­ple might judge us as new­bies didn’t ring with us. 

Buy­ing a HUGE gym machine. It worked for a few days but then we lost inter­est. It didn’t take too long to become a clothes rack. 

Hav­ing an ellip­ti­cal at home. Sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. It worked for a few days but then we lost inter­est even quicker. 

Work­ing out in the morn­ing, noon or night. This might have been a con­se­quence of choos­ing an inad­e­quate work­out space. I’ll elab­o­rate lat­er in this article. 

Bik­ing / Run­ning. We live in Flori­da, so work­ing out out­doors dur­ing the sum­mer is a chal­lenge. And depend­ing on time of day you could even risk get­ting heat stroke 🥵. 

Fac­tors that kept us from con­sis­tent­ly work­ing out #

Inad­e­quate work­out area #

Our Mis­take
We didn’t want to bring a huge gym machine inside our home. So we start­ed work­ing out in our garage. BIG MIS­TAKE! As I said, we live in Flori­da and our garage doesn’t have A/C. It felt like work­ing out in a sauna.

Our Solu­tion
We sold our big gym machine and bought a pair of adjustable dumb­bells (you can quick­ly change the weight) and moved our gym area inside the house. The dif­fer­ence in moti­va­tion by just doing this was HUGE!

Choos­ing the wrong work­out or dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el #

My Mis­take
I start­ed with HIIT work­outs and tried to do the hard­est ver­sion. I felt so tired, my body ached for days and I felt so dis­ap­point­ed in myself for not being able to fin­ish the work­outs. After 5 mis­er­able work­outs I stopped.

My Solu­tion
I start­ed doing yoga to build some strength & con­fi­dence. Yoga isn’t just a good source of pos­i­tive think­ing & med­i­ta­tion but can also be phys­i­cal­ly chal­leng­ing. With time you’ll have the tools to move to a more dif­fi­cult workout. 

I did Vinyasa yoga style from the basics, for about a month and a half. And I still do yoga once or twice per week.

Rec­om­men­da­tions
Choose a work­out that brings you joy. This is so impor­tant, because it’s some­thing where you’ll spend a good amount of your time — at least 4 times per week for 30 mins.

If you like the out­doors, go for a walk and grad­u­al­ly, increase the inten­si­ty to jog­gling, run­ning, run­ning with weights. Be creative.

If you enjoy me time, choose a room in your house, put on your favorite music, tv show or audio­book and start doing car­dio, yoga, pilates, zum­ba, HIIT, any­thing that makes you feel recharged at the end.

Expect­ing quick results #

My Mis­take
Think­ing I’d see big results after a month of work­ing out. While you’ll see some results (depends on your con­sis­ten­cy & effort) it’s not as much as you hoped. It takes time to see tru­ly notice­able changes in your body.

My Solu­tion
Stay pos­i­tive. I’m get­ting health­i­er, more flex­i­ble & stronger every day I exercise.

Not doing research about the do’s and don’ts #

My Mis­take
Not giv­ing enough impor­tance to my body aches. My knees were hurt­ing more than they should. Instead of imme­di­ate­ly doing research, I just kept try­ing to pow­er through the pain. By the end of the week, my knees couldn’t take it anymore.

My Solu­tion
I final­ly decid­ed to do research and found that it could be due to weak ham­string mus­cles, incor­rect pos­ture, inad­e­quate train­ing shoes and lift­ing too heavy. I was doing all of those!

So I bought appro­pri­ate train­ing shoes. I stopped doing squats, lunges, jumps and burpees for a month. I start­ed doing gen­tle exer­cis­es to for­ti­fy my ham­strings (like band­ed clams, bridges and dead­lifts). When I felt stronger I start­ed lift­ing light weights again.

Now I can keep up with­out a prob­lem with any workout.

Not warm­ing-up / cool­ing-down enough #

My Mis­take
I thought they were a waste of time. 

My Solu­tion
I real­ized I was wrong. Warm­ing-up and cool­ing-down have a big impact on how your body is going to feel the next day. It speeds up the recov­ery time, pre­vents injuries and unnec­es­sary body aches.

Not eat­ing enough #

My Mis­take
Eat­ing less to burn more fat. Turns out that only will leave you with­out enough ener­gy dur­ing your workouts.

My Solu­tion
Eat a light snack before and after the work­out (fruits, veg­gies and nuts are all good). Also drink enough water through­out the day, espe­cial­ly dur­ing and after the workout. 

Wrong sched­ule #

My mis­take
I’m not morn­ing per­son. So get­ting up very ear­ly to go work­out had very lit­tle chance of actu­al­ly happening.

My solu­tion
Mov­ing my work­outs right after work, around 5 pm. I’ll admit this has been pos­si­ble most­ly thanks to the pan­dem­ic and quar­an­tine life. We’ll see how I adjust this sched­ule once we nor­mal life returns.🤞

Work­ing out too much #

I per­son­al­ly haven’t gone through this but I’ve heard of peo­ple work­ing out for more than an hour and even mul­ti­ple times per day.

There’s no need. You’ll only tire your­self out & lose motivation. 

Also, instead of work­ing out longer, try to do it smart. For exam­ple, while doing squats you can do chest press. Or while doing shoul­der press you can bal­ance on one feet or do a lunge. Or while doing a bridge you can also do a tri­cep extension.

You’ll be work­ing on dif­fer­ent areas at the same time.

Wrap­ping Up #

It’s fun­ny when friends & fam­i­ly ask

“How’d you lose weight?” 

“Exer­cis­ing 5 times per week.” 

“Oh. 😔”

They’re expect­ing us to share some new mir­a­cle diet. No sor­ry. It takes time, sweat & effort.

Before we found our work­out groove it seemed impos­si­ble to build & stick to a com­plete home work­out sched­ule 5 days in a week. Now exer­cis­ing is part of our day. And weird­ly we actu­al­ly look for­ward to it. 

Be patient. And remem­ber that it won’t hap­pen overnight but you will see results. And you’ll feel great! 💪