If you're searching how to get motivated to workout, you probably already know what to do once you're in the gym. The trouble starts earlier, on the couch at 5:40pm with your shoes by the door. Most people who skip a session don't skip the workout. They skip the 10 minutes between sitting down at home and the first set.
Motivation follows the first set
Waiting to feel like it is a losing plan. Lifters and runners on long gym forum threads say the same thing in different words. Once they were moving, the session took care of itself. Getting out of the chair was the part that needed a system.
Pack the bag before you need it
Lay out your gear the night before. Shoes, socks, shirt, headphones, water bottle, lock. If you train after work, the bag goes in the car in the morning, so the drive home never becomes an option. Gym regulars on those forums repeat one rule more than any other: go straight from work and don't walk through your own front door first. Each item you have to hunt for at 6pm is one more decision, and tired people quit on small decisions.
“Definitely energized.”
Use the two-minute rule
James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, puts it this way: a new habit should take less than two minutes to start. His examples are plain. "Run three miles" becomes "tie my running shoes". "Do thirty minutes of yoga" becomes "take out my yoga mat".
For the gym, the two-minute version is getting changed and getting in the car. Promise yourself only that. Most nights, once you're in the car park, you'll go in.
Decide when and where, in writing
This one has the best numbers behind it. In a study published in the British Journal of Health Psychology in 2002, Sarah Milne, Sheina Orbell and Paschal Sheeran followed 248 people for two weeks. One group tracked their exercise. A second also read material on why exercise is worth doing. A third read the same material and then wrote down when and where they would exercise the following week.
About 35 to 38 percent of the first two groups exercised at least once a week. In the third group, 91 percent did.
Psychologists call this an implementation intention. Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 tests of it, with more than 8,000 participants, in a 2006 review and found a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals (d = 0.65). Write yours as one sentence: "On Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 6:15pm I will train at the gym on Harris Street."
How do I get motivated to go to the gym after work?
Hook the gym onto something you already do every day. BJ Fogg, founder of the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford, writes his habits as recipes in Tiny Habits: "After I [existing routine], I will [tiny new behavior]." Then you celebrate straight away with a nod or a quiet "yes". James Clear calls the same move habit stacking.
After work, the anchor is turning off the laptop or walking out of the office door. A recipe could read: "After I shut my laptop, I will put on my gym shoes."
Train with someone a bit stronger than you
A training partner makes skipping cost something, because someone is waiting in the car park. Partners also change how hard you go once you're there. In 2011, Deborah Feltz and colleagues at Michigan State University had about 200 people hold plank exercises, first alone and then next to a virtual partner on screen who was always scripted to do a little better. With the stronger partner, people held the exercise 24 percent longer. Researchers call it the Köhler effect.
Music
Costas Karageorghis, a sport psychologist at Brunel University who studies music and exercise, told NPR in 2011 that people's preferred tempo for background music during exercise sits in a narrow band of about 125 to 140 beats per minute, and that background music typically cuts how hard exercise feels by about 10 percent. Build one playlist and only play it on the way to the gym. After a few weeks the first track becomes a cue on its own.
A pre-workout ritual that fits in your gym bag
Every tactic so far is a small, fixed action that tells you the session has started. A cue you can feel in your mouth is hard to argue with.
Dragon Breath is a chilcuague mouth spray. Chilcuague (Heliopsis longipes) is a root from Central Mexico, wild-harvested from growth zones the Mara team selects with the help of local elders, then dual-extracted. One spray in the car park or the locker room and within 10 seconds there's a bright, electric buzz across the tongue and mouth. Your mouth floods. The taste is earthy and a little peppery for a second, then the tingle takes over, and a clean, fresh feeling lingers as you walk onto the floor switched on.
One customer filmed their first try. Moments after one spray they said, "Definitely energized." Mitchell S., a verified buyer, left a shorter review: "Epic. Must buy".
It's a spray for practical reasons. The 50 ml bottle lives in your gym bag or your pocket. There's no shaker to rinse and no powder to scoop, and a few sprays is all it takes. The extract stays sealed in Miron violet glass, protected from air and light, which loose root or powder sitting in a tub can't offer. Start with one spray and go up to five once you know the feeling. A bottle holds more than 250 sprays.
Make it the first line of your recipe: "After I park at the gym, I will take one spray of Dragon Breath." For more on the root itself, read what chilcuague is and where it grows, or compare it with other natural pre-workout alternatives.
Dragon Breath – Chilcuague Extract
50 ml mouth spray. Wild-harvested chilcuague root, dual-extracted. 250+ sprays.
Add to bagHow to get motivated to workout after weeks off
Expect the first month to feel like effort. Phillippa Lally and colleagues tracked 96 people building a new daily habit, and published the results in the European Journal of Social Psychology in 2010. On average it took 66 days for a behavior to feel automatic, with a range from 18 to a predicted 254 days.
The same study found that missing a single day made little difference. Missing a lot of days did. So after a bad week, go back to the two-minute version: shoes on, bag in the car, one spray in the car park.
Questions people ask
Why do I have no motivation to work out?
Most people wait to feel like training before they start, and on a tired evening that feeling doesn't arrive. A fixed time, a packed bag and a small start cue get you through the door without it.
What is a good pre-workout ritual?
Anything short that you do the same way every time: the same playlist, changing in the same order, one spray of Dragon Breath in the car park. After a few weeks the ritual itself tells you the session has started.
Is it better to work out in the morning or after work?
Whichever time you can write down and keep. Morning sessions have fewer things competing for them, and after-work sessions go best if you drive straight from the office.
How many sprays of Dragon Breath before the gym?
Start with one spray into the mouth. Once you know the feeling you can go up to five.
