How To Exercise When You Hate Exercising

FitnessHealthy EatingHealthWomen

Mar 12

Written By Tania Atkin

Do You Hate to Exercise

In this blog, I’ll show you how to exercise when you hate it.

Here are (5) different strategies.

Idea #1: Find Something You Like
Ask yourself, Is there any physical activity you enjoyed when you were younger? Did you dance? Play basketball? Soccer? Etc… Even play tag when you were a kid? Chances are it would be just as fun for you now, as an adult. Try a running group or some other group that suits your desires.
Alternatively, if you weren’t a particularly active kid, maybe this is the time to “get exploring”. Try different physical activities, but give them a fair shot: 1-4 weeks each. Ever played basketball before? Join a basketball team for beginning women. This way, the other ladies on the team are of the same skill level as you, and the same age as you. Or, get a friend who likes that sport to teach you one-on-one. This may be a great dating tactic!
Give it a fair shot for a few weeks, and if you still don’t like it… No problem. Move on to something else. Maybe soccer. Maybe tennis. Maybe hiking, or something else.
In my mind, two of the best activities to do for women are group fitness classes and some kind of boot camp group. The reason that those two stand out in my mind is that they’re the only two activities that can truly motivate and strengthen you. The others may be fun, but they don’t build strength. Endurance, yes. Strength, no. Basketball, tennis, and soccer don’t make you stronger.
Idea #2: Have a Small Goal (Read how to set GOALS)
I distinguish "working out / movement“ from "training." Working out and movement are moving around, looking to break a sweat, change your mindset and get your heart pumping. Training, on the other hand, is a purposeful and skillful exercise that is intended to help you reach a certain physical (desired) goal.
When you have a goal, training becomes fun. Seeing yourself change, improve and get stronger is motivating. Working hard with no goal, and no progress is quite de-motivating.
Your goals are totally personal. For instance, one of our clients started training with me at 50, and for her 52nd birthday, she wanted to deadlift 100 pounds. Awesome! Was she motivated? Yep. Did she do it? Yes.
Another one of my clients had a goal to do a 70km hike with a 35-pound backpack. She did it as well. Your goals do not just have to be losing fat or weight!

Idea #3: Short Workouts Are Better
If the idea of doing hour-long workouts is dreadful to you, try doing 15-30minute workouts. Look at it like brushing your teeth – nobody wakes up in the morning, excited to brush their teeth. But they do it anyway (I hope). Same with exercise. You might not like it, but it’s necessary for good health. What’s not essential is the time – it doesn’t have to be an hour.

A 10-minute workout is better than a 0-minute workout.

But what can you do in 5-10 minutes? Plenty!

There’s an entire system of exercise called "Tabata", which is literally 4 minutes. You do an exercise as much as you can for 20 seconds. Then you rest 10 seconds. And repeat 7 more times. That is 4 minutes of your day!!! Or 8 minutes if you repeat it twice.

You can also just pick just 1-3 exercises (like squats, pushups, etc.) per day, and see how many times you can do it in 10 minutes. Try to beat that next time. Keep increasing your time weekly.

So get rid of the "All or Nothing" mentality of "I either do a 1-hour workout, or it’s not worth it." The irony of "all or nothing" is that despite striving for all, more often than not, you get none.

But if your goal is only 15-30 minutes, you’ll hit that goal way more often than if your goal is 1 hour.

Idea #4: Bodyweight Workouts
If your beef with exercise is that you don’t like lifting weights, no biggie. There are other ways to get stronger besides lifting weights. One example is bodyweight training (or what’s often called "calisthenics."). Personally, I love lifting weights and I don’t enjoy tons of cardio.
Likewise, some clients who don’t like lifting weights do quite enjoy attaining mastery over their own body with bodyweight exercises like chin-ups, push-ups, planks, squat jumps, handstands, etc.…
It’s just cool, fun, rewarding, and motivating to see yourself doing things you could never do before. For example, Animal Flows workouts are a great bodyweight workout idea.
Idea #5: Hire a Coach
Come on, you knew I had to throw that one in there. Obviously, it’s my career and my business, so I make a living doing it, and I’m VERY biased. However, having done this for 30 years so far, I’ve seen way too many women who previously hated exercise, and are now actually enjoying the process of it. Not because of some end goal like weight loss or muscle gain, but they enjoy exercise in and of itself, especially for stress reduction and emotional health management.
A good Coach will ask targeted questions to figure out what motivates you and what you find enjoyable and will tailor your program based on that, and foster in you a feeling of progress and accomplishment. After all, there’s more than one way to achieve a goal. Unfortunately, a bad trainer/ Coach will insist that their way is the only way to achieve a goal, and this type of Coach turns off more women from exercise than they help.

To put it simply, a good Coach makes their programs client-centered and encourages a lifestyle change.

Fortunately, having worked with enough women who at first didn’t enjoy exercise, and saw it as a chore, I figured out how to gently instill in them a love of exercise, without imposing my own biases on them. I have been able to nurture them into a lifestyle that incorporates pleasure and movement to improve aesthetics.

If you’d like to chat about the possibility of this for you, just email me with the words "I Hate Exercise" in the subject line, and let’s see if we can work together.

Tania