3 Reasons Why Exercise is Not a Habit

Many people try to create a consistent workout practice by treating exercise like a habit and applying the habits loop framework to it.

Cue > Craving > Behavior > Reward

This framework doesn’t work for exercise, however, because exercise is not a habit.

A habit is an automatic, conditioned response to a trigger.

Exercise is a choice, and it’s one that we often make under uncertain conditions and with varying degrees of energy.

I’ve maintained a daily exercise practice for over 12 years, and it’s still not a habit.

Here are 3 reasons why the habits loop breaks down for exercise:

(1) Humans Have Fluctuating Energy Levels

One of the core assumptions of the habits loop framework is that the same external trigger will always produce the same internal state or craving.

This was the premise of Pavlov’s dog experiment: the bell eventually produced a salivary response from the dogs.

But exercise is not a biological response to a stimulus. Even if you dedicate the same time each day to your workout, put it on your calendar, and set a trigger to nudge you to the gym, you will not have the same response to that trigger each time.

Some days you’ll be high energy and raring to go. Other days you’ll feel sluggish or stressed and like you can’t move.

If you treat those states the same way, you’ll end up with injury or burnout.

A consistent exercise practice must factor in the inevitable reality that you will have different energy levels on different days. You need different plans for those different states.

(2) Exercise Isn’t a Risk-Free Choice

As I noted at the top, exercise is a choice. This brings in executive function.

But it’s not just a low-stakes choice. It’s a choice made under uncertain conditions, with inherent risk, and that leads to more decisions.

• Uncertain conditions: Your human energy fluctuations, and the unknown how how you’ll react.
• Risk: The wrong plan can leave you in physical pain or with injury. You might not enjoy what you do. You might not feel good about your workout, or yourself.
• More decisions: Exercise is a category; it’s not a defined task. The decision to exercise unlocks the floodgates to more decisions: Where? When? For How Long? What, specifically, will you do?

These downstream decisions can overwhelm you with decision fatigue before you’ve even made the decision to exercise, leaving you without energy to actually exercise even if you had already decided to.

(3) The Reward is Intangible and Inconsistent

The real rewards from daily exercise — better health, longevity, and improved strength and conditioning — are long-term and often intangible. You’re not going to have increased longevity or improved strength from one workout. These results accumulate and stack over time.

That’s not to say exercise doesn’t have immediate payoff. The concept of a “runner’s high” got its name for a reason.

But this immediate payoff is not consistent.

In the best of circumstances, a workout leaves you feeling energized, strong, confident and with clear focus. Endorphins flow and dopamine spikes, signaling to your brain that this was a good activity and making you want to come back for more.

But sometimes, a workout can leave you in pain, exhausted, or dysregulated. Instead of endorphins you get cortisol spikes and dopamine depletion. Your brain registers this as an activity to avoid.

Having a strategy to navigate the inconsistency and lack of immediacy in the reward is crucial for sustaining a consistent practice.

You Need a Different Framework

If you’ve been unsuccessful in sustaining a consistent exercise practice, the problem isn’t you. It’s more likely that you are using the wrong tool for the job.