5 Reasons to Workout — Especially When You Don’t Feel Like It

Next month, I’ll celebrate 11 years of daily workouts. My workout ritual is the way I start my day. I call it “Fitness First.”

Read: The Hardest Part of Maintaining a Daily Fitness Habit

When I share with people that I workout every day no matter what, I get a lot of questions:

Even if you’re sick? Even if you’re busy? Even if you’re tired? Even if you’re injured? Even if you’re in physical pain?

What about rest days?

And, of course, What do you do when you just don’t feel like it?

Before I made this commitment to daily fitness, those reasons were constantly keeping me from workouts.

Read: 7 Things I’ve Learned From 7 Years of Putting My Fitness First

I realized that there’s always a reason — an excuse — not to workout. Often, that reason may even appear to be rational and valid.

People get sick. And busy. Injuries happen. Bodies need to rest and recover.

That said, the mind has a funny way of making excuses feel rational. Don’t underestimate your sales abilities — especially when it comes to selling yourself a reason not to do something that is good for you. In the marketplace of excuses, we are our own best customers.

Instead of buying your excuses not to workout, consider investing in one or more of these reasons to exercise — especially when you don’t feel like it.

Read: How to Workout Consistently — Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

5 Reasons to Workout Even When You Don’t Feel Like It

(1) Movement is Medicine

The human body was designed to move. When you’re aching from a hard workout or feeling stiff after a hard day, or feeling a little under the weather, the best antidote is movement.

To be clear: rest is also important.

Often, workouts get pitted against rest as if they were a binary: workout OR rest.

Consider that this can be a both/and.

The game changer here is to redefine what a “workout” is.

A “workout” doesn’t have to be a hard-core, intense experience.

It can be a slow walk, gently moving your body in a pool, a gentle yoga class, a game of ping pong, a catch with your kid. A foam rolling session can be a workout.

Consider active recovery as a form of rest.

Moving your body is a way to flush toxins through, which will keep you healthy. Over the past decade I’ve never felt too sick to move even through a light walk or yoga practice.

As for pain: I have been afflicted with chronic pain and fibromyalgia for over 20 years. I’ve found no better cure for these challenges than movement.

Movement is equally important for your mental and emotional well being. Instead of thinking of your workout as a time killer that will add stress to your busy day or heavy workload, consider that your workout provides the fuel that will power your day and help you focus.

(2) You Never Know

Just because you don’t feel like working out in the moment doesn’t mean you won’t feel like it once you get to the gym.

Motivation to act isn’t static. It can be dependent on and influenced by your immediate environment, proximity to other people, and the equipment available to you.

Here’s a secret: I almost never feel like working out when I wake up in the morning. I’m tired. My back hurts. I’m stiff. It’s usually dark outside.

That’s why I have a rule to put on my gym clothes and head to the gym as quickly as possible.

Putting myself in the environment usually helps me get started. And when that doesn’t work, I just start doing something.

Sometimes the days that I don’t feel like working out turn into my best workouts. Usually that’s when I hit a PR.

Even if I don’t have a great workout, that’s ok. Those days turn out to be important for other reasons.

(3) Train Your Practice

Let’s get clear on something important:

Working out isn’t a habit. It’s not like brushing your teeth.

Habits are things you do automatically. If working out were a habit, you wouldn’t be seeking tips for how to do it when you don’t feel like it.

Exercise is a choice. You must make the decision to do it. Often you have to overcome the voices in your head that are giving you all the logical reasons why you should take the day off.

By deciding once, you remove the decision point from your daily docket. That helps keep those voices at bay.

Implementing that choice daily reaffirms your choice. It tells those voices that the decision isn’t up for renegotiation.

This is how you train the practice.

(4) Affirm Your Identity

The things we do every day become our identity. A writer writes. An athlete trains.

When you show up for your workout, you reaffirm your identity as a person who doesn’t miss workouts.

But this is actually so much bigger than the workout.

Even if you have a bad workout, even if you do less than you wanted, and even if you don’t meet your expectations, you are doing something important that goes beyond the workout.

When you show up for your workout — especially when you don’t feel like it — you also affirm your identity as the type of person who keeps their commitments. As the type of person who follows through. As the type of person who shows up — no matter what.

(5) Cultivate Self-Trust

One of the big reason that we don’t follow through on our intentions is that we don’t trust ourselves when we make commitments to ourselves.

Each time you show up to workout — even when you don’t want to — you affirm your identity as someone who shows up for yourself.

These moments are like deposits in your self-trust bank account. Over time, you prove to yourself that you can trust yourself to keep your commitments. You uphold the standards you set for yourself and the boundaries you’ve established for yourself and with others.

Over time, this helps you cultivate stronger self-trust and improves your follow through in all actions.