By Victor Ngo

The First Step

There are a lot of reasons why you “don’t have time” for the gym – work, family, and so on. However for each of those excuses there is an even better reason to start taking better care of your health now. We won’t even get into that,  let’s just say if you are here then you already realized that you have to take care of yourself first and foremost. And the first step is to make that appointment with your trainer. However, that is only the beginning. The next phase is what separates those who sees great versus mediocre results after training for a period of time.

Staying Consistent

Now that you are in a routine, do you make an effort to stay consistent or do you only workout when it is convenient? Here is a simple scenario you can ask yourself to see how committed you are to  your training routine:

Let’s say you always workout after work. You live 30 minutes from work, and your gym just happens to be right in the middle between the office and home. As you are leaving work to head to the gym, you realized that you had forgotten to bring your gym clothes. What would you do? You could drive home to grab your stuff but then that would mean adding another 30 minutes of commute going back and forth. On top of that, you still need to get groceries and cook dinner after you are done. It’s going to be late.. and you are going to be tired! Should you just cancel your session?

The problem with only working out whenever it’s convenient for you is…LIFE. Life never works out conveniently for anybody.  Things will come up. Plans, situations, and circumstances change. Shit happens. If you are quick to throw in the towel every time,  it will be impossible to stay on track at the gym.

If you are truly making your health a priority, you will have to consistently make decisions that reflects that (this extends to nutrition as well, but that’s a whole other topic). Of course everyone is going to miss a workout here is there. Emergencies happen. Or sometimes you may just have another priority. Don’t beat yourself up over a missed session every now and then. What is a good reason? How many sessions can you miss in a month? Only you will really know. Maybe your trainer will too.