Working out for me is a way of life. It’s something I need to do. I am happy to finally have arrived at that point in my life. It took a long time to get here, and I don’t want to ever go back.
To help keep my focus on the need to get a workout in, I plan to workout every day.
Do I work out every day? Nope. Usually I take Sunday completely off, and I often take Saturday off, too. Every so often I’ll miss a weekday, but if I do, I always make sure to get Saturday in.
“Okay,” you say, “so, Steve, you plan to work out every day, but you don’t. Sounds like your plan is failing. What’s up with that?”
I see your point, but the plan is not failing. The everyday-workout concept is not meant to be taken literally. It’s in place to create a mindset. That’s all.
For example, at a different time in my life I worked out on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Less than half the days in a week.
Wow, with that shedule, it sure was easy for me to skip a workout — and I often did — because, after all, I was skipping most days already. I was more in the habit of skipping a workout than of doing a workout.
When I started easing into exercise by doing a lot of walking several years ago, I had a goal to get in at least 10,000 — and then 15,000 — steps every day. No matter what. Every day.
Did I succeed? Not always, but I didn’t often fail, because those steps were always at the front of my mind.
Similarly, Tony Horton’s P90X has something planned for every day. Do you have to do the workouts every day? No. You can skip the stretching day, if you like (that’s built into the program as optional), and, really, you can skip yoga (although yoga is one of my favorite forms of exercise).
Did I do a workout every day I was going through P90X for the first time? I did for the first five weeks, but after that I did one of the workouts 5 and usually 6 days a week, and sometimes even on that 7th day as well. But, yeah, I did skip days.
“That’s all well and good,” you may be thinking, “but what’s the point?”
Here it is. If I plan to work out every day, I feel like I’ve missed something if I don’t and that makes the next day’s workout all that much more compulsory. No way I’m missing that one.
Plus, when I don’t get that workout in, I feel like I’ve slacked off, so I walk more, move more in general.
As I said: It’s a mindset. Gotta move.
Planning to work out every day has effectively created an exercise habit in my life. And that’s the kind of habit I can live with.