Making Exercise a Part of Your Everyday Routine

In order to stay physically awesome, you need to exercise regularly. There is just no way around that. But keeping up the habit of exercising can be tough, especially in the long run when motivation tends to run out. That's why it's important to make the workout a part of your everyday routine. This way it becomes easier to stay on course with your training, since it would be a natural part of your day, instead of something you just do when you have time for it.

Let's look at your existing routine. You probably have things like sleeping and eating on there, which you make time for no matter what (unless you're a med student, in which case it sucks to be you). Meanwhile, your exercise program is treated differently, and you only follow it when there is time. You don't make the time for it in the same way you make the time for sleeping and eating.

If you found yourself short on time, would you consider skipping sleep in order to catch up? No? Then how about skipping your workout? That's probably more likely to happen. Why is that?

You may argue that working out isn't important enough to be included in your daily routine. And granted, skipping a few training sessions probably won't cause as much harm as skipping sleep or eating would do, but it's of equal importance in the long run. If you don't stay in shape, it's going to take it's toll eventually. Therefore, you should make sure to treat your exercise program with the same respect as you do your sleeping schedule, and make sure you put time aside for it each day.

But how do you actually do it, if you're already short on time? Well first off, you should try making the time for it, by any means necessary.
 

Making the Time for the Workout

Let's say your daily schedule is already too full to incorporate a daily workout. (If it's not, feel free to skip this step). You just don't have any time to spare out of your day. Perhaps this is true, perhaps not. Either way, there are a number of ways to make sure you get some extra time for a proper workout - without any major consequences.

The first and simplest method to find time is to replace something you already do, with something that would give you exercise as a byproduct. For instance, would it be possible for you to replace your daily commute with a run or bike ride to work? Would you be able to do some pushups and situps while watching TV in the evenings? Search your day for everything and anything that could be replaced in this fashion.

If you're unable to find anything to replace, however, there is another method which anyone can implement; cutting back on sleep. This sounds counterproductive, I know - you probably sleep as much as you do for a reason. But the thing is that, with regular exercise, anyone can reduce their need of sleep with at least an hour every night. That's because a well trained body requires less sleep on average to recover during the night, that does its untrained counterpart. So by replacing an hour of sleep with an hour of exercise, it will all even itself out in the long run.

Making Sure You Stick With it

However, once you've found a way to incorporate your workouts into your daily routine, another problem still remains; how do you make sure you stick with your training in the long run? Although this problem is a lot easier to handle once you've successfully made exercising part of your day, it can still be difficult at times to keep up with your training. 

That's why it's so important to treat it like any other vital part of your day. You'd never skip out on sleeping, would you? Why would you be willing to skip your training? Just change the way you look at your training, and tell yourself it's something you have to do - much like eating, or brushing your teeth. That way, it won't be long before your training has become a natural part of your life, and you won't have to give it much thought in the future.