8 Good Habits You Should Start This Week

Consistent improvements to your performance and physique demand that your routine stops becoming, well, routine and becomes a habit. Follow elite athlete Alice Hector’s advice on how to become a habitual winner.

Let’s face it, it’s not that difficult to start a fitness routine. The trouble comes with sticking at it. While there’s no doubting it feels good afterwards, there’s little more unappealing than exercising when tired, especially if results aren’t coming quickly enough.

But start missing your workouts and, before you know it, all good intentions have slipped and the routine is broke. Yet, to achieve your dream physique, you need to be consistent.

For me, to make training twice a day as habitual as brushing my teeth, I needed time. I didn’t enjoy the hard graft in training but, as the years went by, I stuck at it, got better and surrounded myself with like-minded people, which made training more pleasurable.

It was a daily ritual: repetition slowly became habit and I soon started to get a sense of rhythm and relaxation during sessions as I became fitter and my body adjusted to the demands. So how can you get there? Here’s my advice:

1. Spice it up

If I was just a swimmer, I’d be bored. But even elite swimmers don’t just swim. Triathlon or multi-sport offers variety and different stimulation. Mixing up your gym program regularly offers fresh challenges and you’ll also get faster results.

2. Seek company

The camaraderie and competitiveness of group sessions and the sense of achieving something kept me going back. Find someone who has similar goals and agree to meet them at certain times. You’ll find it more difficult to procrastinate.

3. Prioritize your training

It has to be non-negotiable. The busiest people can fit in some exercise most days, if they want to. Schedule your training time as you would a business meeting. After all, if you don’t invest in yourself, no one else will.

4. Become an early bird

For me, training before my body really registers what’s going on is the best way to get it done. It leaves you with a feel-good factor you can take with you through the day, and frees up some valuable time in the evening.

5. Don’t leave it too late

The next best thing to exercising first thing is to do it on your way home from work. But try not to go home first, because there aren’t many people who can pick themselves up of the sofa after a quick sit down.

6. Too tired? Have a go anyway

Chances are you’ll feel better after exercising. Following the initial rush of oxygen from the first two minutes of exercising, tiredness usually disappears. The key thing is to try. If you still feel horrible, then stop. The habit forming process is still intact, even if you have to cut the occasional session.

7. Log your activity

Keep track of your sessions and what you accomplish in each one. Looking back, it’s normally quite surprising to see how far you’ve come. The brain is very good at forgetting, so a written reminder can serve as great reinforcement as to the progress you’ve actually made, rather than focusing on the progress you still have to achieve.

8. Fuel the fire, don’t light the match

Even the most seasoned professional will not get close to breaking records every session. Instead, they get out regularly, putting in decent work and focusing on layering good session after good session.

You should not set yourself some near impossible task, but work within yourself most of the time, to ensure you don’t burn out mentally or physically.

Find  fitness advice and more in every issue of TRAIN for HER magazine.