By Laura Henshaw – Keep It Cleaner
@keepitcleaner + @laura.henshaw

With the weather starting to cool down and the days getting shorter it can be hard to keep up our motivation to exercise. Steph and I wanted to share our tips of how we stay motivated to keep up our exercise routine during winter and don’t let the cooler weather affect our workouts.

1. Join The Gym

While it is a fantastic idea to suspend your gym membership in Summer because you can take all your workouts outside to the sunshine in Winter the thought of an outdoor session is suddenly extremely unappealing. It will be much easier to push yourself to get into the temperature controlled gym where you know you will be comfortable and won’t be affected by what is going on with the weather outside. This also means you can’t use the rain as an excuse.

2. Plan Your Workouts

This may seem so obvious that it won’t make a difference, but we promise it does! Every Sunday night sit down with your diary and write in all your workouts for the week. Schedule them in like meetings and then tick them off when you complete them. Go into as much detail about each workout as you can so that way you are more committed to getting the session done and don’t have to think about it.

3. Workout For How It Makes You Feel

Instead of exercising for how it will make you look, focus on how it will make you feel. Often we use inspiration to get a summer body as our motivation and while any motivation is great it is really important to try and see your health as a 365 days a year 24 hours a day thing, instead of just in the 3 months leading up to Summer. Workout because you will have more energy, feel more confident and feel happier and if you ever lack motivation think about why you should sacrifice this feeling and your health just because its cold outside.

4. Don’t Always Expect To Feel Motivated

This is an important one. Unfortunately there is no magic pill to take that will automatically give you motivation before every single workout. If I only worked out when I was motivated to do so I would only work out 1/5 of the time I do. My advice is to not think about it. If you have planned to do a workout then just get to the gym and get it done. You will feel motivated once you get into your workout.

5. Get Your Workout Out Of The Way In The Morning

While a 6am alarm may seem like the worst advice of the century, I can promise you once you get used to it you will be fine. It is not only the best way to start your day and get your blood flowing it also means you can get home from work at night and relax. Unless you are in the minority who enjoy getting home at 7pm, getting changed into workout gear and venturing out into the cold instead of getting into your pajamas- getting your workout in in the morning will be the best way to ensure you don’t skip any.