To stay motivated to go to the gym, stop depending on motivation. Train at a fixed time, pack your bag the night before, set a minimum session for bad days, and aim for at least four sessions a week for the first six weeks: in a study of new gym members, that was the minimum it took for exercise to become a habit. Make it enjoyable, track your streak, and pair training with something you love.
The number that matters: four times a week for six weeks
Navin Kaushal and Ryan Rhodes followed 111 new gym members for 12 weeks. Exercising at least four times a week for six weeks was the minimum needed to establish an exercise habit. Their data also showed that consistency, keeping the workouts simple, a supportive environment and actually enjoying the sessions all predicted how strongly the habit formed.
Translation: your job for the first six weeks is not to get shredded. It is to show up four times a week, in a way you can enjoy enough to repeat.
How to stay motivated to go to the gym after work
- Go straight there. Do not go home first. The couch wins nine times out of ten.
- Keep the bag in the car or at your desk.
- Eat a snack at 4 p.m. so hunger is not your excuse at 6.
- Lower the bar on hard days. Twenty minutes counts. The habit is the point.
How to get motivated to go to the gym early in the morning
- Lay out your clothes, shoes and bottle the night before.
- Put the alarm across the room so you have to stand up to stop it.
- Decide the workout the night before so there is nothing to think about at 5:45.
- Get to bed early enough to sleep seven hours. Read how to wake up at 5am for the full plan.
How to stay motivated to go to the gym in winter
- Sleep in your workout base layer, or warm your clothes on the radiator.
- Use a bright light first thing in the morning.
- Book classes or sessions with a friend: a booking is harder to skip than a plan.
- Have a home fallback: twenty minutes of bodyweight training when the roads are bad.
Seven tricks that keep you going
- Write when and where. "When it is 6:30 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, I am at the gym." Plans in this format strongly improve follow-through (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, 2006).
- Set a minimum session. Warm-up plus one exercise. Most days you will do more.
- Bundle a temptation. In a gym field experiment, people who could only listen to gripping audiobooks while exercising went 51% more often at first (Milkman et al., 2014). Save your favourite podcast for the treadmill.
- Track the streak. A calendar with an X for every session is surprisingly powerful.
- Train with someone. Social commitment beats private promises.
- Follow a simple program. Not knowing what to do is a quiet reason people stop going.
- Keep a reason in sight. A line on your Lock Screen at 6 a.m. does more than a vision board in a drawer.
How much should you train?
US guidelines recommend 150 to 300 minutes of moderate activity (or 75 to 150 minutes of vigorous activity) a week, plus muscle-strengthening activities on at least two days (HHS, 2018). Four gym sessions a week covers that comfortably.
For lines that get you out of the car and through the door, see the gym motivation quotes, or set a gym motivation wallpaper.
FAQ
How do people stay motivated to go to the gym?
Mostly by not relying on motivation: fixed times, a packed bag, a minimum session for bad days, training partners and tracking. After about six weeks of training four times a week, going starts to feel automatic.
How do I get motivated to go to the gym again after a break?
Restart smaller than you left off: three short sessions in the first week, lighter weights, and a fixed schedule. Rebuild the habit first, then the intensity.
Is it normal to not want to go to the gym?
Completely. Even people who train for years have days they do not want to go. The difference is that they go anyway, often doing a shorter session.
Sources
- Kaushal, N., & Rhodes, R. E. (2015). Exercise habit formation in new gym members: A longitudinal study. Journal of Behavioral Medicine, 38(4), 652–663. doi.org/10.1007/s10865-015-9640-7
- Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. (2014). Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283–299. doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2013.1784
- Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119. doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(06)38002-1
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd edition (2018). odphp.health.gov/our-work/nutrition-physical-activity/physical-activity-guidelines/current-guidelines
