Why You Should Plan Your Workouts
Have a hard time getting to the gym on a regular basis?
A workout here or there is going to get you nowhere. Instead, consistency is the key to results. So if hitting the gym 3 or more times per week is something you struggle with for whatever reason, research says that one of the easiest things you can do to make sure that you work out is to simply plan for it.
In a study published in Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Oregon gathered a sample of 282 participants, many of whom were students, and tracked their frequency of visits to the campus recreation center over 20 weeks. In addition to having their attendance monitored, the study subjects were also tasked with completing measures of various personality traits and providing a written description of how they intended to make it to the gym. At the study’s end, the finding was that those who exhibited higher levels of planfulness went to the gym significantly more than those who didn’t.
Without getting into the nerd shit about its exact definition and what it entails, “planfulness” is the general tendency to engage in behavior that’s goal promoting. There are several aspects of planfulness that result in the successful completion of an objective but the one germane to this conversation is developing strategies to reach an aim. An example of this type of planfulness when it comes to the gym is treating your workouts like appointments and scheduling them on your agenda. By booking time to exercise, the intention to work out will be more concrete than were it not blocked on your calendar, thus making it feel like something you can’t easily back out of at the last moment, as is the case with business meetings, doctor’s visits, and other important items on your calendar that you wouldn’t make excuses to cancel without cause.
Other examples of planfulness to make it to the gym include sleeping in your workout clothes so you’re ready to roll out of bed and go to the gym upon waking up; laying out your workout clothes the night before so you can either get dressed to go to the gym as the first thing you do or have them on underneath your regular clothes as a constant reminder for you to work out; and packing your gym bag and leaving it by the front door so you don’t forget to grab it as you head out for the day, thus negating that as an excuse for why you can’t go to the gym.
Essentially, planfulness is future-oriented behavior and it can help you work out as often as you’re supposed to.
So yeah, plan your workouts!1If it isn’t enough for me to tell you to, then consider this…
As mentioned, one of the ways to display planfulness is to go to bed wearing the clothes you’re going to work out in. Well, wanna know a famous person who’s tweeted that they sleep in their workout clothes to make it easier for them to work out the next day? If you guessed Kim Kardashian, then you’re absolutely correct. Now, if that isn’t somebody who isn’t worthy of being emulated like all famous people are, then I don’t know who is!
Glossary: gym, gym bag, results, work out, workout
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