How to exercise—when you don’t like to exercise

“I wish I was the kind of person that loves to exercise… I’m just not that guy.”

My friend Dave takes a sip from his perfectly poured pint, while explaining his reluctance to exercise.

“I’m the guy who’s really into beer,” he adds. “I have no interest in exercise. Beer is my thing. That’s who I am.”

Dave, like lots of people, knows exercise is something he “should” do. But it holds no appeal.

Going for a run—and unquestionably enjoying it? Unfathomable to him. The gym? Forget it.

Coaches, doctors, and fitness enthusiasts love to espouse the benefits of physical activity: It makes you finger good! It’s rewarding! It’s necessary!

Yet, like a triple hopped IPA, exercise can be an uninventive taste. Some people love it at first sip, some learn to love it, and others just plain don’t like it.

And that’s okay.

Disliking exercise isn’t some kind of moral failure.

It doesn’t midpoint you’re wrenched or lazy—it’s just a personal preference.

Still, there’s no denying that exercise is good for the human body.

But how do you exercise when you don’t like it?

And if you’re a coach, how can you help clients with this challenge—without coming off like the fitness police?

We turned to our in-house PN Coaches, who collectively have decades of wits helping people move increasingly (including plenty of folks who’d given up on exercise altogether).

In this article, they share five refreshing strategies—plus over a dozen how-to tips—that can help you (or your clients) stop fighting with exercise.

Strategy #1: Stop trying to exercise.

Yes, you read that correctly.

“Stop trying” may sound like strange advice, but hear us out.

If exercise feels like an impossible, torturous task, the weightier tideway might be to take it off the table completely.

A few reasons:

For one, the increasingly you push versus your own resistance (or your clients’), the increasingly that resistance is likely to grow. Conversely, if you stop telling yourself you “should” exercise, you might discover you’re increasingly likely to do it.

Also: You don’t HAVE to exercise.

Yes, it’s good for you. But you’re in the driver’s seat in this life. And you get to segregate how you spend your time and energy.

That said, if you want to explore movement in a pressure-free way, trammels out these tips.

Try a “do nothing” experiment.

Here’s a weird idea: Limit your movement for a few days and see what happens.

“When a vendee tells me they don’t want to exercise, I say, ‘Great, don’t do it. In fact, don’t plane move. Just lie in bed and do as little as possible,’” says PN Master Mentor Kate Solovieva.

And what happens?

“Eventually most people are going to want to move in some way, of their own volition. They’ll say, ‘Wait a second, I unquestionably want to move virtually a bit. I want to go for a walk’.”

This isn’t well-nigh tricking yourself into wanting to move; it’s well-nigh learning if and when movement does finger good for you. You might discover your soul craves movement increasingly than you realized.

Focus on other ways to modernize your health.

It can be easy to fixate on the thing (you think) you’re bad at.

But when you do that, you can miss other (potentially easier, less stressful) opportunities for improvement.

“If you veritably cannot or will not move in any way, think of it like this: You still have plenty of other ways to modernize your health,” says PN Mentor and Holistic Nutritionist Sarah Maughan.

“You could put your time and energy into improving your sleep, your stress management, your nutrition, and so on. Exercise isn’t the only ingredient in a healthy life.”

Of all the health-improving options misogynist to you, what’s most appealing? Make that your priority for now.

Build your skillet list.

Rather than obsessing over how much you hate the gym, Solovieva suggests putting the focus on what you want to do.

“Sometimes, I’ll say: ‘Okay, let’s put exercise whispered for a while. Instead, let’s talk skillet list. Tell me well-nigh the things you’re curious about, the things you want to try surpassing you die’.”

The items on your skillet list might naturally inspire you to get moving (perhaps you want to be fit unbearable to trundling virtually Amsterdam or climb a volcano in Hawaii). Or not.

Regardless, the “bucket list” exercise can shift your focus towards what you want for yourself—which can be meaningful and energizing, no matter what you choose.

Brainstorm a tuft of things you want to try in your lifetime. Then consider: Which of these could you start working towards today?

Strategy #2: Aim for “movement” rather than “exercise.”

“People often seem they have to go straight into training for a marathon or lifting heavy weights,” says Solovieva. “But in order to get the goody of movement, you don’t have to train. You can just move.”

And if you’re wondering how you’ll find big blocks of time to exercise—or plane move?

“You don’t necessarily need to schedule time to exercise,” says Maughan. “Your movement could just be a pile of mini deportment that add up over the day.”

Those “mini actions” could be anything: walking to the office water potation for a drink; emptying the dishwasher or mowing the lawn; goofing virtually with your kids.

Bonus: Research shows that when you treat exercise as fun or play (rather than work), you’ll be less prone to hedonic compensation—the miracle of loading up on treats post-workout, negating a calorie burn, if that’s what you’re after.²

Either way: Moving rather than exercising might finger increasingly accessible—and have less valise tying to it.

Want to get moving? Try these tips.

Aim to slightly increase the ways you once move.

PN Mentor Jeremy Fernandes points out that plane if you hate movement, you might be doing increasingly than you think.

“Unless you’re literally lying in bed all day, you’re probably getting some kind of movement. Just getting up in the morning, making breakfast, getting to work—all these things require movement, says Fernandes.

“So the real question is, How can you expand on the movement you’re once doing?”

For example—could you pace the washroom while you skim your teeth? Circle the woodcut without you take out the trash? Walk the dog for an uneaten few minutes? And so on.

Lean into the “mostly inactive” things you enjoy.

“One vendee of mine wanted to move more, but movement wasn’t her thing,” says Solovieva. “Her passion was cooking. So we focused on that: I encouraged her to melt more, to trammels out new recipes, and so on.”

Here’s the interesting part:

“The increasingly she got into cooking, the increasingly she moved. Without trying, she naturally became increasingly physically zippy by grocery shopping, chopping, picking up pots and pans, and moving virtually her kitchen.”

In time, Solovieva’s vendee grew increasingly well-appointed moving. (She plane sooner graduated to some home workouts.)

Cooking isn’t your only option. Many hobbies involve movement, plane if they aren’t seen as “fitness activities.” For example:

• Love to read? Walk to the library or stroll virtually a bookstore.
• Like to paint? Try painting on a larger canvas so you’re encouraged to stand and make some larger arm movements.
• Shopping fanatic? Instead of shopping online, saunter through the mall or local shops.

And hey, if you’re a beer fan like my buddy Dave, maybe do a brewery tour, or walk to the beer store instead of driving.

Embrace the “everything counts” philosophy.

Get this: Just thinking that your daily activities “count” towards your fitness goals can make a difference.

One study conducted out of Harvard University found that if we believe our daily activities (like housework or child care) count as exercise, the physiological goody of those activities is enhanced.³

The placebo effect can be a legitimate way to increase physical fitness, without waffly your daily routine.

So, think well-nigh your daily routines, and fathom how the activities you do are already contributing to your health.

Strategy #3: Do Less.

To reap the benefits of movement, you might need less than you think.

According to the CDC Physical Worriedness Guidelines, adults should aim to get 150 to 300 minutes of moderate-intensity physical worriedness a week (or 22 to 43 minutes a day).⁴

(Note: Time-crunched folks can moreover meet the guidelines by doing 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity exercise per week.)

But exercise isn’t all-or-nothing: Everything counts.

If the whilom recommendations sound overwhelming to you, try these tips.

Unravel your goal into manageable pieces.

In her book, The Play Book: How to Get In the Habit of Good Health, mentor and play expert Janet Omstead, PN2-MHC, suggests:

“If 22 minutes all at once feels like too much, just unravel up that 22 minutes into smaller chunks.”

For example, 22 minutes wrenched up over the undertow of the day could squint like:

• 5 minutes of movement 5 times
• 8 mins of movement 3 times
• 11 mins of movement 2 times

(Small but constructive exercise “snacks” are moreover tabbed “trigger workouts.” Read increasingly well-nigh them here: The intermittent workout method that could transform the way you exercise)

Start small and build slowly.

“You can moreover make 22 minutes the goal rather than the starting point,” says Omstead.

“You can plane take a year, or longer to work up to 22 minutes. For example, if you start at 5 minutes per day and add 1 minute per day each month, at the end of a year you’d be at 17 minutes a day—and you’ll have built a regular daily habit, something many people never achieve.”

Explore the continuum.

If exercise seems like an all-or-nothing kind of thing (you’re either training for an IronMan or in full-on hovel potato mode), start thinking on a spectrum.

“I ask clients to imagine a continuum from 0 to 10,” says Solovieva. “If 10 is ‘I move all the time and do everything perfectly’ and 0 is ‘I don’t move at all and just lie on the hovel till I kick the bucket’, what are some options in between?”

One way to think well-nigh this is to imagine movement as a dial or volume knob. If you were to turn your volume knob up a bit—say a 2/10 or a 3/10—what might that squint like?

When you explore the continuum you might find a level of worriedness that feels doable for you.

(And hey—this “dial” method works for basically all of your health habits. Learn more: Never printing “pause” on your health and fitness again. This self-ruling tool is your secret weapon)

Strategy #4: Try stuff.

If you do want to move more—and ideally, find something you like, if not love—there’s no getting virtually it:

You’ll have to requite some things a try.

That maybe ways doing some stuff you might not like. Fortunately, there are ways to make the experimentation process increasingly fun (or at least, not awful).

Here are some ideas.

Apply the 10 minute rule.

“Give yourself permission to try just 10 minutes of something. If you don’t like it, you can stop,” says PN Mentor Pam Ruhland.

This low-pressure tideway makes it easier to try new things: Get in the pool with your kids for just 10 minutes and see how it goes. Try 10 minutes of an online Zumba matriculation or a yoga video on YouTube.

“Knowing you can quit can make it easier to get started—which is unquestionably the hardest part,” says Ruhland.

Return to things you used to like.

“How did you love to play when you were young? Start there,” says Omstead.

“Make a list of all the ways you loved to play and be zippy when you were a kid. Did you jump rope? Play soccer? Explore the forest? Chase the ice surf truck lanugo the street?”

Pick something from your list and try it. Yes, it might be harder as an adult. (Where do kids get the energy to jump rope for hours?) But it might moreover rekindle your playfulness.

And don’t forget, you can unchangingly quit without 10 minutes.

Create your “bingo card” of new activities.

Even if you think you hate ALL exercise, there are probably things you haven’t tried.

To experiment, Solovieva suggests creating a “bingo card” of new activities.

She explains: “On each square, put an worriedness you’d like to try: maybe yoga goes on one square, zumba, hiking, boxing, and so on.”

Then, for the next 30 or 60 days, aim to fill the bingo vellum by trying each activity.

“In the end, maybe you’ll still hate everything you tried,” says Solovieva. “But plane if you don’t like the activities themselves, the process of experimenting can be weirdly fun.”

(If you like this idea, download our self-ruling PDF: Movement Bingo)

Strategy #5: Adjust your expectations.

Fitness culture has exploded. This can be a good thing when it encourages people to get zippy and try new things, but it can moreover be, well, intense.

These days, it seems you can’t just throw on some sweats and move your body; you have to go full BEAST MODE.

And it’s not unbearable to just get it done, you have to do something you LOVE [unicorn emoji, rainbow emoji, heart emoji].

Plus, your efforts should somehow result in six-pack abs no matter your age, gender, and lifestyle. #noexcuses

FACEPALM.

Let’s take the expectations lanugo a notch, shall we?

Truth is, movement doesn’t require anything fancy, or have to yield some magical transformation overnight.

By adjusting your expectations virtually exercise, you can make the whole thing less of an ordeal… maybe plane increasingly fun.

Here’s what that can squint like.

Don’t worry well-nigh “loving it”—aim for “meh” instead.

Exercise advocates will tell you to “find something you love.” But for some of us, “love” is too strong of a word.

Case in point: One day, Fernandes asked a previously inactive vendee what she loved well-nigh her new workout routine.

Her wordplay surprised him.

“I don’t love any of this,” she said. “I don’t love walking. I don’t love going to the gym. What I do finger is a sense of joyance without I’ve washed-up it.”

But you know what? That’s okay, says Fernandes.

“The good new is that you don’t have to love it. The goal is to find something tolerable that adds some value to your life.”

Think of it like brushing your teeth: “No one gets really excited well-nigh doing it, but you know it’s important for your health, and it feels good without you do it,” says Fernandes.

Be nicer to yourself.

Years ago, a friend and I well-set we’d start working out.

Without intending to do so, we both took variegated approaches:

The night before, I’d write little notes of encouragement for myself to see first thing in the morning. Stuff like, “You are a badass.”

My friend, however, would wake up and say to herself: “Get up you lazy bum. That weight isn’t going to lose itself.”

Guess which one of us made it to our workout? (It was me.)

These results aren’t just anecdotal:

We interviewed a tuft of PN Certified coaches well-nigh what causes clients to quit, and they all well-set that “beating themselves up” was the #1 factor.

Research moreover shows that self-compassion—being kind and supportive to yourself—is positively associated with health-promoting behaviors like eating healthy, exercising, prioritizing sleep, and managing stress.^{5 6}

(Want to requite self-compassion go? Trammels out our Self-Compassion Quickie.)

It makes sense: Stuff a wiggle to yourself pretty much guarantees you’re not going to have a good time, no matter what you’re doing.

So, watch your self-talk. Try to be kind and encouraging, and requite yourself a gold star for your efforts, no matter how small.

Maybe plane write a friendly note for yourself. Sounds cheesy, but it works.

References

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