Maybe you’ve been on a workout train for some time, diligently going to the gym and happily taking your dose of cardio and weight training, maybe even a few classes too just to challenge yourself. Perhaps you’ve been on this train, per se, for years, then all of a sudden, you’re okay with missing a workout, then two. The idea of going to the gym or out the door for a jog becomes a chore, when it was once something you enjoyed. Have you been there? Are you there now? If so, read on… I think I can help.

True, I am a trainer, but at heart, I’m really a fitness buff and have been since college. My reasons for working out have not always been the same, however. They change every 3-5 years. For example, in college I worked out to equalize the pizza and beer I consumed on the weekends. After college it was to lose the weight I’d gained when workouts weren’t enough to equalize pizza and beer, which I had to give up as well. That’s okay – good riddance. In my early twenties, the goal was to maintain weight loss, then to prepare for my wedding and honeymoon. After that, to deal with the stresses of a high pressure job. Moving into my thirties, my goals changed more frequently: I worked out to stay healthy and strong during pregnancies, and to lose weight post-pregnancy, and to keep up with my active brood. At forty, workouts have become a way to slow the aging process, maintain muscle mass and bone health, and keep arthritis at bay for as long as I can. As you can see, goals and reasons or working out evolve as you do. If those goals don’t evolve, or you don’t take the time to assess WHY you are working out, workouts can become meaningless. Dull. Passe. A chore.

Your body likes change. So does your mind.

When (if) you find yourself losing interest in exercise, it may be time for an overhaul. I don’t necessarily mean harder workouts, but maybe different workouts. Challenge means many things – just trying something new may help you discover a new love for exercise, and a new reason to keep at it.

Last year, I began to notice that I didn’t recover quite as quickly from hard workouts as I used to. I felt tight and unbalanced. I found myself less interested in hitting the gym, more interested in my “rest and recovery” days, which sometimes spanned two or more days. That wasn’t like me, and I knew it. Based on experience, I also knew it was time to reassess why I was working out.

Why do you want to be fit?

Ask yourself this important question from time to time: Why do you want to be fit? Your answer will likely change every few years, so if you haven’t thought about it in awhile, now might be a good time. For me, my reason quickly went from “training for an endurance event,” to “staying fit and flexible for the long haul.” The daily pounding and brutal workouts served their purpose, now I wanted to learn something new, something gentler. Enter, yoga! For me, this served the purpose of both challenging me, and correcting some of the tightness and imbalances that weren’t resolving on their own (most don’t, by the way.) Yoga improved my mental focus, and helped me realize that fitness is about a balance between strength, cardio, and flexibility. And mental muscle. Once I acknowledged the benefits, my attitude toward the gym took a turn too and I found myself looking forward to working out again, but in a gentler way than before.

So before you throw in the towel and quit working out together, first see if you can come up with some new reasons for staying fit. I bet you’ll find a renewed enthusiasm for sweat.

The “meeting of the calendars” took place last night. My dear husband (and faithfully training partner) and I sat side-by-side, dueling laptop calendars and marathon training schedules in hand, trying to figure out how, when, and where we were going to fit it all in (and by “it,” I mean: four kids, two jobs, and the multitude of commitments that go along with both, too many to list). Turns out, it is possible to find time to train for long races…IF you plan, and have support. Which leads me to a very important point…absence of either one of those criteria will make the road to your goal, whatever it may be, a long, tortuous trek.

Here’s why…

I love the saying, “Failure to plan is planning to fail.” For twenty (or more) years I have been a fitness enthusiast to the Nth (more than 10 of those years as a personal trainer), and to this very day, I still sit down every week and plan my workouts. I don’t write down all of the specifics, but setting time aside on Sunday to glance at my week ahead and pencil in my workouts is routine practice for me. I do this for a couple of reasons:

1. If the activity is on my calendar, odds are great that the event will occur. I won’t “accidentally” schedule something else in its place if it is on my calendar. I can’t ignore the words, “5-mile run,” if they are penned in at 6AM on Tuesday. And if I do ignore it, I have only myself to blame, because I made the commitment to do that activity, on that day, at that time.

2. Writing down my workouts on the calendar, in advance, sets the tone for my week. Exercise, for me, is a priority. So somewhere between training clients, taking care of the kids, the house, volunteer commitments, etc., is ME time. I like ME time to involve exercise. Once it is on my calendar, I can then schedule other activities that are of lower importance.

Now, about the “support” I mentioned earlier.  You need it. Your husband, boyfriend, girlfriend, sister, mom…whoever it is, needs to know that exercise is important to you. Here is a real-life example, taken from my life. My husband and I have very different work schedules. He works a traditional, 8am to 6pm job. He can only exercise before work, or after. He chooses before, as we have other commitments in the evening (such as my job, kids’ activities and homework, and so on.) I take on clients during the morning, and evening, and am often up until midnight doing office work. I opt to train mid-afternoon, freeing up the early morning for my husband’s workout. In turn, he covers me in the evening.  I have more flexibility than he does during the day, so that is when I schedule my workouts. It helps that we are working toward the same goal(s), but even if he were training for an Ironman and I, a 5K, we’d find a way to make sure the other party got the requisite number of workouts in.

Now, let’s pretend your husband is not supportive. Or maybe you don’t have a husband. Or maybe you are the husband, and your wife isn’t all that into exercising. What do you do for support? Well, to me, support equates to accountability. So anywhere you can find someone (or a group of someone’s) to hold you accountable for reaching your goal(s), then go there. A running club or training group, for example. Or group personal training sessions. Support might also come in the form of a friend, neighbor, or family member who will relieve you of one responsibility, briefly, such as child care, so that you can fit in your workout. I’ve utilized a number of resources over the years: drop-off childcare so that I can squeeze in a training run during an odd time; having one of my parents watch the kids; signing up for races with friends so that we can encourage and support one another. I’m sure you get the drift.

My point is, accomplishing fitness goals isn’t something that just happens. I’ve been asked on numerous occasions how my husband and I are able to train for such long races when we have so many other commitments, and my response has always been, “we support and help one another do what needs to be done in order to train.” But the long story is, it does require a meeting of the minds and calendars in order to make it happen. True, we do sacrifice some activities in order to fit it in, but to us, its a small price to pay for health and fitness.