How to stay consistent with your weightlifting routine

Sticking to your workout routine can seem hard, but it doesn’t have to be.

You’re most likely here because you struggle with continually skipping days or weeks of your workout routine.

Or maybe you keep starting a routine only to shortly end up quitting. Then the cycle repeats over and over again.

Don’t worry though, you’re not alone. Staying consistent in a workout routine requires both lifestyle and mindset changes. For some people, it can be harder than for others. The good news is, it’s completely attainable for anyone.

Having a consistent workout routine is essential for anyone looking to maintain a healthy lifestyle and long term well-being.

Here’s exactly what you need to do to stay committed to your workout routine.

In this post you’ll find:

Why it’s important to stay consistent with your workout routine

If you want to see any kind of progress with anything in life, the key is to stay consistent.

This also applies to your workouts and is especially true for anyone who lifts weights. To actually see changes from weightlifting or any workout routine, it takes a lot of time, consistency, and effort.

You won’t see the results you want to see if you aren’t continually getting into the gym and putting in the right amount of effort. Keep in mind that with any workout routine, you get out of it what you put into it.

As a result, you can’t expect to make tremendous gains and see the changes you want to see if you’re not staying consistent in your routine.

So if you want to see changes in yourself from working out, then you need to make your workouts a daily habit.

In this post, I’m going to talk about how you can do just that.

Strategies to stay consistent in your workout routine

In these strategies I talk about staying consistent “everyday”. Keep in mind that rest is extremely important for everyone who works out. I take about two or three rest days a week myself.

As a result, I don’t necessarily mean to workout every single day, but rather everyday in your workout routine that is scheduled for you to workout.

Create a routine that works for you

In order to actually stay consistent with your routine, the first step is to create a routine that actually works for you.

The goal here is to make a routine that’s realistic and that’ll work with your schedule.

Think about it, it wouldn’t be very realistic to say that you’re going to go to the gym for 4 hours everyday.

Unless you’re an extreme body builder and workout for a living, chances are this isn’t realistic or achievable. Even if you tried, you most likely wouldn’t be able to sustain a routine like that because it’s not suitable for your lifestyle.

As a result, you want to try and design a routine that would fit into your lifestyle. For example, as a full time college student who also works part time, I have to plan my workouts around my classes and work schedule.

I allocate a certain amount of time each day to go to the gym.

On days when I have more time, I like to do leg workouts because I know they’ll take me longer. Whereas on days when I have less time I do upper body or cardio because it doesn’t take me quit as long.

This is an example of me creating a routine that works for me and my schedule. It’s important that you do the same for yourself.

Select a time of day that works for you

Additionally, it’s also important to select a time of day that works for your lifestyle.

Going along with designing a realistic routine, if you’re someone who’s absolutely not a morning person and never will be, you probably shouldn’t plan to workout at 5:00am everyday.

Chances are you wouldn’t enjoy this and wouldn’t be able to sustain it.

Instead, choose a time of day that fits into your lifestyle and that you’ll enjoy.

Select exercises you enjoy

This is one of the big ones for me. No one is going to stay committed to a routine if they don’t actually enjoy doing it.

You need to find ways to enjoy working out everyday. The best way to do that is to select exercises that excite you.

In order to stay consistent in your routine, you need to be excited to go to the gym.

Some people are all too familiar with dreading every single workout. This is a great way to end up skipping workouts and quitting your routine altogether.

A workout shouldn’t be something that you dread, but rather something you look forward to. If your workout leaves you feeling excited, motivated, and good about yourself, then you’ll want to be doing it as often as possible. That’s how you can fall in love with working out everyday.

For example, sometimes I find myself dreading a certain exercise in my weightlifting routine. This happens to me often with RDLs. I’m not sure why, but when I know I have RDLs on my schedule, I start dreading that part of my workout.

However, instead of skipping the whole workout because I don’t want to do one exercise, I swap RDLs out for a different exercise.

Then, I might wait a few weeks before making the swap again to add RDLs back into my routine.

There’s nothing wrong with adjusting your routine to something that makes you feel more motivated. In fact, once you become consistent, you might find that making small changes often is a great way to keep you engaged in your routine.

Make your workout a daily habit

One thing you can do to help you stay consistent is to make your workout a part of your daily routine.

This turns it into something that you don’t just do when you feel like doing it. Instead, it becomes something that’s automatically scheduled into your day.

There are plenty of things you do everyday without even thinking about them. This is because they’re a part of your daily routine and tasks you accomplish everyday.

Think about it, you usually wouldn’t debate brushing your teeth when you wake up or whether or not you should shower for the day. Instead, these are just things you do everyday, automatically.

The same should go for your exercise routine. Get used to a time of day that works for you, maybe it’ll be first thing in the morning or after you finish work or school at night.

Then, whenever the time may be, that’s when you make it a habit to automatically go out and do your workout.

Eventually, you’ll get so used to your workout routine being part of your day, that you won’t want to miss your workouts.

Find music you can enjoy and gets you excited

Music can be a game changer in the gym. It has the power to be your biggest motivator.

Because of this, I think it’s a good idea for anyone who works out to invest some time finding music that motivates them. Spend time finding new songs that inspire, excite, and motivate you to get out there and get a killer workout in.

After that, you can create a playlist for yourself with all your favorite gym songs. Listening to these songs while you workout will help you push yourself and make progress.

Additionally, you can also listen to your workout music before your workout. An excellent time to do this would be if you’re feeling really unmotivated to go to the gym but are trying to convince yourself to.

Try jamming out to your gym playlist at home while visualizing yourself in the gym and working out. Afterwards, you’ll hopefully feel much more motivated and end up deciding to workout.

And if you don’t, at least you’ll have had a good time jamming out to a good playlist!

Rely on discipline over motivation

A ton of people are always looking for ways to stay motivated in their exercise routines. Asking things like how do you stay so motivated to workout?

But the truth is, motivation only gets you so far. It’s easy to be motivated at the start of a new routine. However, once you get into the depth of it, motivation will most likely come and go. Especially if you’re a weightlifter, since it takes so long to see actual results.

For most people, they aren’t motivated to workout everyday. Almost everyone who stays consistent in the gym has a busy life and a lot of other life stressors that take away from the motivation to workout.

However, this is where discipline comes into play. Discipline means you know what you need to do, so you do it. You make a commitment to yourself, so you stay true to your commitment.

To do this, decide what days you’re going to workout and what you’re going to do each day. Then, when that day rolls around, don’t let minor excuses get in your way.

Of course, what I’m not saying is that you can never miss a workout you had planned or that there’s never any excuse to miss the gym.

Every so often there you will need to skip the gym or miss a workout you had planned. And this is totally fine. Maybe something comes up, something serious happens, you’re extremely busy, or you need more rest than usual.

You just need to be honest with yourself and make sure these excuses are valid and aren’t a routinely thing.

Find ways to measure your progress

Once you start seeing progress in the gym, it’ll become so much easier for you to stay consistent. That’s because you can already see the changes you want to see. Even though you might not quite be where you want to be yet.

The longer you workout, the more changes you’ll see. However, once get to the point where your progress starts becoming more noticeable you’ll become extremely encouraged and motivated to continue doing what you’re doing.

How to measure your progress in the gym

As someone who lifts weights, there are a lot of ways to measure your progress in the gym. The biggest thing is to learn how to know if you’re gaining muscle, not fat.

Unless you’re on a fat loss journey, my biggest advice would be to ditch the scale. Scales can be a difficult indicator of weightlifting progress because they have no way of measuring your body composition.

The scale doesn’t account for things like muscle mass, body fat percentage, or water weight.

That’s why it’s so important to learn other ways to recognize and measure your progress.

For example, things like the way your clothes are fitting, how you feel, and how you look.

You’ll notice your clothes fitting tighter where you want them to and looser where you don’t. You’ll most likely feel more energized, confident and motivation. And finally, you’ll most likely look slimmer, more athletic, and more toned.

All of these are great things to look out for and great indicators of progress.

Because of this, it also makes them great motivators.

Takeaways

Staying consistent in a gym routine can seem difficult. However, consistency is crucial if you’re looking to make any kind of progress.

Lucky for you, there are things you can do to help you stay more consistent in your routine.

Finding a routine that works for you, discovering ways to motivate yourself, and becoming more disciplined are all ways to improve your consistency.

Once you do these things, you’ll be seeing progress in no time!

More posts on women’s weightlifting:

How to body recomp, build muscle while loosing fat

Here’s exactly how to eat as a weightlifting women

Unilateral movements and why they’re essential in the gym