How do you get yourself to the gym

I drive.

I also do my best not to make excuses for myself. I need to work out five times a week minimum, so I get the workouts in during the first five days of the week, less stress for me!

I focus on how much better I will feel for making myself go. I know I will feel bad for missing a session. My options are: sit around thinking about the gym or get up and burn some calories. The time will pass anyway. I've also added a preworkout to give me a boost. You may not agree with them or like them, but they give me the kick I need to get going. There is no way I can sit around after I've taken C4, Jack3d, or Assault.

Get in my car and drive there!

But seriously, I try to think of how awesome I'm going to feel afterwards, and how proud I'll be of myself for going instead of staying home.

I take my gym stuff with me to work, if I've got it with me, I'll go on my way home. If I come home first, it's 50:50 whether or not I'll bother.

I have a 15 year old daughter recovering from ACL reconstruction so I go along her 3 or 4 times a week. Two of these visits are at 6.30am. She gets on with her rehab exercises and I just do my own thing.

We both motivate each other into going apart from me kicking her out of bed at 6am.... ;-) The joys of waking her up....

Going was the hardest part for me.

So I quit and bought weights for home and do all my running outside. It's worked beautifully.

I go first thing in the morning and look at it as being as mandatory as going to work, I have no choice. If I try to talk myself out of it I use a technique that a trainer told me: Go to the gym and at least touch the door. If you truly still don't feel like working out then turn around and go home. Personally, I have never gone home. I may tell myself I'll take it easy but usually once I get going, I get bored with not pushing it so I end up going all out.

There is a big mental factor... Nike is right: Just do it!! And you will always feel great for having done so.

Edited to add


Always make sure your gym bag is packed and ready to go the night before (including water bottle in the fridge and post workout snack in the bag, I even have most of my breakfast laid out). Also make sure you get enough sleep. Hard to get out of bed or extend your day after work when tired.

Make it part of my schedule. I go right after work. No excuses. It's on the way home, it's got a Kids Klub for my daughter and I require myself to do 30 minutes which is next to nothing in the scope of one day.

I look at myself in the mirror and compare what I see to what I want to see. Then I grab the bag and go workout.

Usually works.

i really need to use some of these tips, im hopeless.

i do agree with the preparation though, if ive remembered to sort out my gym bag and put it in the car, im much much more likely to stop at the gym on my way home...

I cut a deal with the girls at the desk for the next two months. If they don't see me and if they check the computer and its a second day off in a row, I have to go deliver them a salad and since I am there I have to work out lol. There is no way I want to buy them a salad lol

I walk.

I go first thing, three days a week. If I don't go then, I can't go - I have work and then I have university commitments. So I set the alarm, my husband gets up and walks the dogs - so he's up, the dogs are up, the cats are up, so I guess I'm up, too. I lay out my gym clothes, pack my food and my gym bag the night before, so when I get up on goes the heartrate monitor, the gym clothes, the gym shoes, then I grab my lunch out of the fridge and I'm out the door and at the gym when the door opens at 6am.

As for motivation, I have a pretty severe congenital back problem, so some mornings I have to make myself decide if my back is genuinely unable to cope or if I'm being a crybaby. (I'm always in pain, so it's more about where is the pain located and can I actually walk well enough.) If I skip - some days I have to - I go the next day, no excuses. Some days I go and skip the bits my back can't handle, but I do that the next time.

If I don't go my back gets worse. If I don't finish losing the weight, the surgery will be worse or possibly my surgeon won't agree to do it when the time comes.

But the best motivation of all is my loser ex-husband weighs 350lbs and is unemployed. I'll see him for the first time in 10 years this September at my son's graduation. Spite and hatred get me out the door, some days.

It helps that I love lifting weights...but really, it was a matter of making it a habit. I missed all of last week due to some unforeseen circumstances and it really gnawed at me.

Posted before I read the rest of the thread, and I am so glad I read it! This is my favorite kind of thread, "things that work". Nice to see recurring themes!

A couple more things that worked for me: I don't make a schedule for my entire week, the way some people do. I just get myself to the gym, and I decide there what I am going to do. I try not to lift two days back-to-back or run two days in a row, and if I feel like having an easier day, I'll just use the stationary bike or the elliptical. Once I get there, I know I'll do something, but I do not like being tied to a rigid plan.

Also, I don't like showering twice in one day unless it's 100F outside--it seems wasteful. Working out in the morning, then showering--that's my routine. Even on rest days I try to take an extra long walk with the dog before showering.

Some days I have to have a talking to myself about going. Like this morning, I told myself I would go after work. However I know that I wouldn't because I have other obligations after work. So I made myself get up and go. The other thing that makes it easy for me is that I go with my daughter. It is easier to go if you have somebody hounding you about going. I am an emotional eater, when I feel like I want to eat my feelings for the day, I go to the gym instead and take it out on something there.