Marion Freijsen A blog about Sports, Fitness & Health

Find a rhythm

For me, exercising is like breathing. If I don’t do it regularly, I don’t live.

People often ask me how I manage to make time every day for sports, or exercise. It’s like eating though – you all make time for a meal, right? But I understand that it is not that easy for everyone to motivate themselves.

The “trick” is to make it a routine. Don’t try and work out whenever you feel like it, but set yourself a time maybe three times a week defining what you would like to do in advance. So perhaps 6:30 am is the best time for you – block it in your diary three mornings and tell yourself the night before exactly what you will do the following morning, i.e. I am going for a run, I am going to the gym to do a weights session (even better if you know which part of your body you will be training). Doing this decreases the chance that the “this-bed-is-so-comfortable” thought wins out over the “must-get-up-and-train thought” come 6:30 am. Visualise yourself getting up, enjoying the early morning and raring to get going on your workout. Over time, it’ll become second nature to jump out. The same goes for those that want to work out in the evenings ofcourse, visualisation will help you stick to your goals and off the couch.

Today is my day “off” – meaning, I give my body a chance to recover from the runs, bikerides and weights. I do like to sneak in a “soft” class of some sort though, be it Pilates, Yoga or Tai Chi (or a mixture of those) – it helps me lengthen those muscles that I have been shortening through the other sports I do, and ease the aches and pains that unfortunately do come with age… even if you have been active all your life and even if you never believed your mother when she told you all those years ago