5 tips to help you exercise after work, because working a day job (9-5) or operating a business can prevent you from working towards your health and fitness goals, due to fatigue or laziness. If you really want to live a healthy lifestyle, you have to make necessary sacrifices and changes to ensure that your goals don’t change.
Before I started working full-time, I used to train four to five times a week, but now I am lucky to even get three workouts in during the week. I understand that you’re tired after work and you sometimes have to cook dinner, which is a lot to think about. There are many reasons to take a rain check on training, this is why I have proposed five ways to overcome these excuses.
1. Meal Preparation
Preparing your meals beforehand whether on the weekend or day before, besides saving yourself time to cook on the day, it ensures that you have more time to train. I believe that when you train, you get motivated to eat well and vice versa. You also save money, because you won’t feel the need to buy takeaways since you already have cooked food prepared for yourself.
Meal preparation makes your fitness goals more achievable, be it fat loss or muscle gain. It is a great practice to incorporate into your routine to save time and money in the long run. Bulletproof has a nice guide you can use to help you meal prep as a beginner.
2. Make Training Your First Priority When You Get Home
On the day that you workout, you need to make training the first thing that you do the moment you get home or wake up in the morning. Do not lie down or eat anything (other than your pre workout if you have), drop your bags or take your work clothes off and get in your training kit.
This prevents the second thought that comes with waiting and taking your time. Before you start to think “I can train tomorrow” or “later” or “this weekend”, take action by getting to it before thinking about doing it. Make the workout your first priority the moment you get home from work.
3. Make Music Your Motivation
We all have music that moves us into different moods. On your way home, as soon as you get home, listen to music that motivates you to train. This is something that can be used as a trigger for when you want to be active or even wake up at all in the morning.
Find a song or make a playlist of songs that get you motivated, this is powerful and can be time consuming, but worth it. I find a song that always gets to me with connected memories that motivate me. I get to “prove someone/myself(little voice) wrong” and in that moment, I get possessed.
4. Reward Yourself
Incentives have been a powerful tool for as long as I have known about them. When you do things knowing that you’ll be rewarded after doing them. You have guilty pleasures that you love to indulge in, but know that it’s detrimental to your progress at the amount you eat it.
Reward yourself with that sweet treat or favourite snack or cheat meal on some of the days that you want to workout. Otherwise, do not touch the treat until you exercise again. This technique can create a healthy relationship with food and balance in your nutrition. Your discipline with regards to portions is important though, ensure that you don’t overindulge on them and watch your calories.
5. Do Quick Workouts
There are many types of quick workouts that you can practice. I recommend High Intensity Interval Training, which is a kind of training or method of training that involves intervals of high intensity and low intensity exercise to complete a set. It is something that people often do in their training, whether they realise it or not.
The great thing about HIIT is that it can burn a lot of calories in a short amount of time, compared to steady state exercise. Not “having time” is one thing that can stop you from training after work. A quick workout which can be done with minimal equipment is ideal to ensure that you can achieve your fitness goals and attend to other business that you want to pursue after that.
You can find on my Instagram or checking my workouts here to see that HIIT workouts are ones which I live by right now. I continue prioritising my health and fitness, but I also want to put effort into my business and this blog to keep providing you with some helpful content.
The Bottom Line
These 5 tips to help you exercise after work are a guideline, but you have to adapt to your situation as best as possible. If being healthy and fit is what you want to achieve, make the necessary changes to make it happen.
Your mind is the one which you have to convince to get you to train. You have to start training to feel better and not look better, the looks are a byproduct.
The consistency of training week in and week out no matter how many times is more important than training a lot one week and then not at all the next, for example.
Find an accountability partner that you want to achieve your goals with. It’s all about developing healthy habits more than achieving the goals, remember that. Developing them with someone is helpful, but if in your mind, it’s all about comparison and just looking good, it may not be worthwhile.
How do you motivate yourself to exercise after work?
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