Today, I want to share with you concrete tips for making any workout plan really work for you. Because here’s the secret…

Pretty much every fitness plan works.

Really.

Whether you do a “walk off the pounds” type program or a CrossFit high-intensity powerlifting plan, the key is making exercise habits stick – not finding the perfect program.

The key to effectively sticking with an exercise program is to do it often enough that it becomes part of your mental blueprint for the day.

Unfortunately, this can take a long time – one-liners about it taking 21 days to make a habit really undersell this. Most habit researchers agree that it takes 2-3 months for a routine to become firmly ingrained into your daily flow (this is why my programs are always 3+ months). Check out this article by Atomic Habits author James Clear to learn more.

So what do you do until something actually becomes a habit?

Making Exercise Habits Stick

The key to sticking with healthy behaviors until they become habits is to intelligently remove friction from the routine.

Think of “friction” as “anything that gets in the way of you doing your exercise.”

Once a habit has beefed up a little, it can handle reasonable friction. But at the beginning, we want to make it as easy as possible to follow through.

Essentially, you want to plan your exercise habits not for the most motivated version of yourself, but the laziest version of yourself!

Predict what could go wrong, and then address those issues in advance… rather than hoping things will work out perfectly, only to be frustrated by reality.

My Example of Removing Friction

My personal example of removing friction from my exercise habits happened this winter after I had Gabriella. My whole world had changed – not just because of having Gabriella, but also because of the global pandemic. I still wasn’t comfortable with going to my local gym where – prior to the pandemic – Michael and I had gone every early weekday morning for cardio and strength training.

Even with a treadmill and weights at home, I found that I was having difficulty getting my butt in gear in the morning, and I was having trouble making exercise habits stick. I was waking up early enough, I wasn’t too groggy, I felt fine – but I just couldn’t connect the dots consistently and actually exercise in the morning for awhile.

I did a little detective work in my own morning routine, and realized that my exercise clothes were the bit of friction keeping me stuck.

It was that simple. Because, at the time, Gabriella’s nursery shared a wall with our bedroom, and my chest of drawers were very close to that wall, I had been unconsciously procrastinating getting dressed in my workout gear because I didn’t want to bumble and rattle around in the dark, waking up Gabriella and Michael. Did I mention that the pulls on the drawers are the metal swinging ones that make tons of noise??

That one issue – my workout clothes being jumbled in my noisy drawer in the dark right next to the nursery – was a frustrating obstacle that kept me from being as consistent as I could have been.

As soon as I realized this, I pretty much emptied the entire contents of my workout drawer – leggings, shirts, sports bras, shoes, socks, everything – into a shelf in our laundry room. Now, as soon as I wake up in the morning and warm up the Nespresso machine, I pop into the laundry room and change with the light on and can immediately get on the treadmill. Later in the morning, once everyone’s up, I can put my pajamas away.

While it hasn’t fixed every single motivation problem I have, my workout clothes were a huge point of friction that – once smoothed out – made the whole journey much easier. My. morning exercise habit went from “maybe I’ll get it in” to nearly daily.

In today’s blog post, we’re going to discuss common friction sticking points that make exercise goals difficult to maintain, and explore solutions for smoothing them out, so that you can be more active, more healthy, and more fit!

4 Common Sticking Points

#1 No Plan for Your Workout

This is a big one. Having no plan for exercise means that you probably won’t exercise. Even if you set the time aside, if you do not have a specific cardio activity to do or a specific video or weightlifting scheme to follow, making exercise habits stick is really hard to do. You may end up messing around a little with weights or the other equipment you have, but that’s all that happens – a little messing around. It’s ultimately unrewarding.

I highly recommend getting a piece of cardio equipment like a treadmill or a good indoor bike or rowing machine so that you do have one “mindless” exercise option for those times when you just don’t have the mental bandwidth to plan something. Remember, mental energy is friction, too.

But I additionally recommend buying into a structured program so that you get workouts delivered to you that you can follow along with. Strength training is an extremely important part of a healthy exercise plan, but most people feel confused and directionless with weights or bodyweight training. Whether you do my 3-month beginner’s program or something free like Fitness Blender on YouTube, it’s so incredibly helpful to have direction and structure.

It reduces mental friction to simply be told what to do and follow instructions.

#2 No Workout Clothes Ready

I already went through this with my story, but there are other issues that I see clients – especially women – run into with exercise gear.

You really need:

• One pair of activity-appropriate shoes (flatter “training” shoes for weightlifting, and running shoes if you are running, for example)
• Two or three excellent sports bras that fit you well (my favorite brand is Brooks)
• Two or three pairs of activity-appropriate leggings (nice compression for higher-intensity activities)

On top of these items, even the rattiest t-shirt is fine.

The essential pieces need to be clean and in a place that’s easy to transition from pajamas (in the morning) or work clothes (in the evening).

#3 Distractions (aka “Quicksand”)

I think you will immediately be able to come up with examples for yourself as you read this.

What are the small things that get you “stuck” like quicksand just as you’re about to set your exercise habit into motion?

For me, it’s 100% my phone. Especially if I sit down with my phone, even for a second, before I start exercising, I get stuck in quicksand for a little while.

Another quicksand example for me is if I don’t change into exercise clothes right away in the morning. If I am in my workout gear, it’s fine if I sit down with coffee for a minute before I work out. But if I’m still in pajamas, it’s pretty likely that if I sit down with coffee I’m going to get stuck on that couch indefinitely.

For some of my clients, it’s turning on the news. For other clients, it’s taking 30 minutes to “relax” after work.

You can probably think of your own examples – what quicksand pits can you recognize for yourself? They’re probably small things, but the sorts of things where you tell yourself, “just five minutes,” and then a half hour vanishes.

Once you think of your own examples, strive to make them rewards after your exercise, instead of preceding your exercise.

#4 Lack of Enjoyment

This is a huge one. Do you enjoy (or at least can neutrally tolerate) the type of exercise you do? If not, you may need to shake things up.

We all go through periods of low motivation. Exercise is tough. It’s usually effortful. It’s not as easy or fun as sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee and a book. But if you consistently find that you dread your workouts and procrastinate doing them, then you need to sweeten the deal for yourself so that you can build your own motivation.

The first way to do this is to address the type of exercise. Is there an alternative form of exercise that you would enjoy more, which would still get the job done? For example, would a dance cardio workout video be more fun for you than 30 minutes on the rowing machine? Then do that!

The second way to do this is with distraction. If you’re bored on the treadmill, could you pipe in an interesting podcast, watch Netflix, or read a book on your Kindle? I just had a client fix her motivation last week with this trick. Try to pick something that’s a guilty pleasure that you don’t normally have time to indulge in.

The third way to do this is to add a social element to your exercise. Can you have an accountability buddy that you can exercise with either in person or over video?

Using these tips allows you to remove friction from your workout routine, so that you can repeat it often enough (and for long enough) that it moves into habit territory – where you feel weird if you don’t exercise!

By the way, many of these same tips can work for removing friction from your healthy eating habits, as well. I hope your main takeaway is this: plan your strategies for the laziest version of yourself, not the most motivated version of yourself!

What are the ways that you can remove friction from your daily exercise goals? Let me know in the comments!