We all know working out works. We all know that women prefer muscular guys and that the game is improving every day for men who are in shape. This isn’t the problem. The problem is actually getting off your ass and to the gym in the first place.
Plus a lot of guys just plain hate working out. Let’s face it, working out is work and work sucks. The good news is it doesn’t have to, at least not to such an extent that you quit after the first week and go back to the couch.
Here are a few ways to resist the urge and keep soldiering your ass into the gym everyday.
Get Fun Workouts
Don’t have a physical hobby? Get one. Try boxing, skiing, surfing, or jiu jitsu. Your body should be used and it should feel better to work in a well-conditioned body than a poorly conditioned one. Your workouts themselves should even be fun. Don’t like lifting weights? Try a boot camp or a boxing class instead.
Shorten Your Workout
You don’t have to sacrifice results to do this. A lot of CrossFit workouts are only 20-30 minutes long. Focus on the major movements and get on to something more fun in your life.
Shortening a workout makes it more intense and easier to deal with. If you can last through 30 minutes of pain every day, you can get a great body and make it easier to talk yourself into the workout every day.
Get a Workout Partner
Right now, I work out with my girlfriend. It’s a great way for us to bond. We both feel better, look better, have better sex and get more compliments. A few years ago, it was my friend Mike. Nothing made me more excited than answering the phone and having him yell “Let’s get huge! I’m on my way to your house!”
Turning working out into a social experience adds value, makes it easier and more motivating, and helps build accountability while making the workouts themselves a more fun experience. If you don’t have a workout partner, get one.
Show Off Your Gains
Making some progress? Start wearing sleeveless shirts, going to the beach or wearing tighter fitting clothes. Women will notice and it will make the work you’ve done more worthwhile.
If you’re not making gains, well, get a better workout plan. If you are, you know what to do.
Use More Variety
You aren’t supposed to change up your workouts significantly except every 4 to 8 weeks, but for some people, that might not be enough. While I don’t advocate jumping from program to program, make sure what you’re doing progresses, has variety and gives you enough change that you aren’t doing the same thing month after month.
Just Remember, You WILL QUIT if you Hate It…
So don’t hate it. Remember, the gym is your time. Your boss isn’t there. Your girlfriend or wife isn’t there. You aren’t punching in or punching out. You are doing it for yourself and should feel empowered, not annoyed.
If you hate it and see it as a necessary evil in your quest for a richer life, better health, and more abundance of sexual options, you will be gone before you know it. Even those with incredible discipline will have a tough time talking themselves into doing something that they hate. You are no different.
I’m not doing this to preach or make you feel inadequate. Ask any passionate athlete, bodybuilder, or fitness model if they enjoy what they do at the gym and most will tell you that they do. They survive not because they’re better than you, but because they have more drive to do it.
Find your reason to enjoy going to the gym so you can stick to it.
Read More: 5 Pre-Workout Tips For Consistently Better Workouts
“Right now, I work out with my girlfriend. It’s a great way for us to bond. We both feel better, look better, have better sex and get more compliments. A few years ago, it was my friend Mike. Nothing made me more excited than answering the phone and having him yell “Let’s get huge! I’m on my way to your house!”
Hands down gayest paragraph on ROK
This will counteract the side effects of the gayness and serve as a reminder for what you should be feeling when you lift:
Now that makes me want to crush my enemies, see them driven before me and hear the lamentations of their women.
BTW: if you haven’t done the arnold blueprint to mass on bb.com i def suggest it. Excellent gains in strength and size in 8 weeks and it was fun.
is that the right link? It didnt load for me.
No, that is not the right link. Here is the right link: http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/arnold-schwarzenegger-blueprint-trainer-main.html
worked. Thanks man.
yeah sorry, didn’t even mean for it to be a link just put bb. Anonian below put up the correct one. Excellent program
appreciate it. I’ve been looking for something new to do.
I start Monday. Looks like a good routine.
Crush it! Also, enjoy your cheat meal.
I’d have to look at my log but I think my end result was something like gaining 12 pounds while loosing 6% body fat
I’m more like this when I work out.
Fucking DARK, man.
the only time i work out with my girlfriend is when she’s doing the splits naked….
lol!
Well, it’s at least Art Of Manliness & Askmen worthy, lol.
Brilliance
Ahahaha holy fuck. I don’t know whether to be insulted or die laughing.
And yeah, many gay rumors about me and my friend Mike. I figure if there’s not a gay rumor or two about you and your good friend, you aren’t really good friends.
And there it is, the second gayesy paragraph on ROK. You’re welcome.
I don’t know. Fitness and especially resistance training are a part of who I am. Trying to make it fun—lifting for looks, lifting for women, lifting to fit into those tight shorts—might help in the short term, but I think I speak for everyone who does it as part of a lifestyle in saying that you have to train for something bigger than that or you will not have the long-term motivation. I know what that is, many men know what that is. You should find it out for yourself.
well said. Bravo.
Jack Donovan wrote a essay about that in his book A Sky Without Eagles. Train for Honor I think it was called. It’s worth a read.
It had some influence on what I had to say.
i train to feel good, and because the thought of looking like my coworkers with their jowls, man boobs, and beer guts horrifies me.
seriously, when i don’t feel like working out, i look at one of the guys i work with struggling to breathe as he hauls his bloated carcass up the stairs and that’s all the motivation i need.
I prefer high intensity training. HIT for 30 minutes and out the door. Combined with a good diet and proper technique (look it up) and you end up looking like a Greek god for only a quarter of the time compared to the live at the gym, gym rats.
Hey GhostOfJefferson – I’m with you on the minimalist workouts. If you’re not into living at the gym but still getting results you might like my stuff on it.
http://themanthemyth.com/what-now/
How do your results compare? I’d be interested in hearing what type HIT you do and how many days a week.
Will take a look, thanks.
One thing I will recommend is doing bodyweight workouts. Infinitely more variety and fulfilling than just putting another 10kg on your bench press.
Fitness became more exciting when I moved to high intensity, moving on a treadmill with a moderate pace for an hour is boring as fuck regardless if you have music or not. High intensity sprints and weight training solves this problem, I don’t know about anyone else but working out for me is the worst part of the day. I usually like to get it out of the way as early as possible.
I found power-lifting got me motivated to lift weights. Before that it felt like a chore.
Trying to figure out exactly how much weight I could lift off the ground gave me a tangible goal to work towards, and I put on 20 pounds of muscle in the process over a couple years.
Nothing increased my raw strength and stability like mastering the deadlift.
“Turning working out into a social experience adds value, makes it easier and more motivating, and helps build accountability while making the workouts themselves a more fun experience.”
On the contrary, I have noticed (and unfortunately been guilty of) countless times where assholes at the gym are doing nothing but chatting it up and hogging the machines/benches while they chat away with their supposed workout partner(s).
While a workout partner can be a welcomed spotter, more often than not it seems, they are only a distraction. Additionally, it’s difficult to find a partner with like minded goals and or a workout regimen similar to yours (he’s on leg day, you’re on chest day).
I feel more zoned in when there is nobody in the gym to distract me. Just me, my headphones/music, and the weights.
I genuinely enjoy working out and my disposition declines dramatically if I don’t do something physical in a day. I suppose that is why I hate sitting here at my work desk so much…
It isn’t necessary to go to the gym to do a good workout. You can do a lot at home with a selection of dumbbells, a chinning bar, and some creativity.
For a beginner, the most important thing is to just get started.
Make daily exercise a part of your life and there comes a day when it’s so automatic and habitual that boredom becomes a memory.
Make it a “I’m doing this for XYZ reason and there’s light at the end of the tunnel” and you WILL get bored. Make it a part of your life and your mind goes into autopilot each time and a half hour later you won’t even remember you worked out.
It’s also best to incorporate the workout schedule with your daily chores. Meaning you don’t rest between work and workout or if you don’t work that day, work out first to get it done and you have the rest of the day for everything else.
I’ve been working out daily since 1984 and the longest I went without workout was 1 month while in basic training in the early 1990s for military service and back in 2009 I had a very bad flu for 3 weeks. All other times I have a routine going and never missed it.
(And yes I had women in my life try to mess with that, and they got told this was my time and they should fuck off)
“Make daily exercise a part of your life and there comes a day when it’s so automatic and habitual that boredom becomes a memory.”
exactly. at this point skipping a workout for me would be about like randomly not showing up to work one day just because i don’t feel like going.
i would also add that once you’re in basic shape, if you’re bored with your workout, you’re probably not pushing yourself hard enough. 30 minutes on the eliptical at a moderate pace is boring because it’s easy and inefficient. the insanity max 30 workouts i’m doing now are 30 minutes of hell, way too hard to be boring.
I picked up basketball as a hobby 3 years ago. I would show up to open gyms and play full court as often as I could. I would bust my ass on defense and in getting rebounds because I couldn’t really contribute offensively. When the gym died down, I would stay after to work on my shot, handles, and footwork. 3 years later, I can show up to any park or open gym and be either the best player or a vital contributor to a team. The best part of the deal is that I am in incredible shape because of it. I am below 10% body fat and can eat whatever the hell I want.
Um, if a homo sapien EVER gets bored from exercising then they never even started doing it for the right reasons in the first place!
Skinny asian chicks is yoga stretch pants showing a thong underneath, rolling around on a mat doing glute exercises make working out interesting.
I gotta get to the gym…
Doing her girlie squats in front of the mirror, making her little grunting noises.
I do variations of Convict Conditioning, Jailhouse Strong & Natural movement bodyweight based stuff since I don’t often have access to a gym. Absolutely love kettlebells when i do have access to them, though. They can be addictive as cats & maple honeyed cake to a fat feminist.
Used to be more involved in kickboxing & trail running a few years ago.
Indeed, the ennui that can develop by being enveloped too long in an enclosed gym can be remedied in many ways.
Good article. BTW, the chick in the pic is not bored at all, but rather having a moment of ‘sensual’ reflection or maybe she just saw something terrifying.
Pretty much. She is faking the tiredness.
Guys I’m pretty sure she’s taking it from behind
I just look at the one picture I keep of myself when I was a fat blob. Keeps me motivated every time and has worked for 8 years now.
If you get bored during workouts then obviously you are not training properly. I know that when I train in the gym, it’s super intense…and it should be. People get “bored” in the gym because they either walk on the treadmill or cycle for about 20-30 minutes and MAYBE do a couple of bullshit exercise ball workouts. Those are the people that eventually cancel their membership and never become fit, or at least as fit as they want to be.
Training properly begins with dedication. In order to have dedication, you need to establish a goal. Everyone has different goals when they enter the gym. Some lift for looks, some lift for strength, some lift for sports, etc. Whatever your goal is, it needs to be clearly defined. Without a defined goal, you don’t know why you’re in the gym and you WILL become bored.
Once establishing your goal, you must keep track of it somehow to prevent you from losing motivation. If your goal is to lose weight, weigh-in at the same scale every week. If your gym has a bodyfat calculator (the electronic one, not calipers), use it. Write down your progress. Take photos every week. This will keep you focused.
Once your dedication is present, you can now focus on the training. Training the proper way is absolutely essential to getting results. The way you train should always be based on what your goals are. For example, if you want to increase muscular mass, you should train the basic exercises with progressive overload. Squats, Bench, Bent-over row, two-arm curl, etc. And you want to make sure you do this to where you are sweating and exhausted afterwards.
I won’t go into much more detail, but that’s the advice I have. Establish a goal or goals, clearly define them, have a method to track them, and most importantly: Train as hard and as dedicated as you can be. You’ll be surprised how far you’ll go.
Excellent advice. I’m not being sarcastic when I say that I look forward to your contributions to the ‘Body’ section at ROK.
Great comment.
In regards to goal setting you need to have a date/event to keep yourself accountable.
I’ll lose 10lbs for my family reunion on March 1st vs the generic ‘my goal is to lose 10lbs’