The Missing Ingredient in Your Workout Routine
The Motivation Series, Part Two
FRIDAY, JANUARY 12, 2024. MIDDAY.
SCENE: An indoor soccer field in Denver, Colorado.
A 30-something woman in a T-shirt and pink Adidas shorts sits on the edge of the turf, lacing up her soccer cleats. She’s had these cleats since high school. The proof is in the seams, which are busted around the toes. Over the last decade, they’ve lived in the trunk of her car, kept just in case.
Today, just in case happened.
She didn’t join a team or decide to coach kids. Today, she simply brought her soccer ball to the gym, ignored the barbell and weight plates, slipped through the back of the indoor field’s goal. Laced up, warmed up, and started kicking around with her freshly pumped soccer ball that for months had sat ignored on the shelf of her coat closet.
What sparked the renewed interest in her childhood sport?
I’ll tell you. Since, you know, she is me.
I finally broke out my ball and cleats for two simple reasons:
Because I set a goal to run sprints every week of 2024.
Because running after a soccer ball is the most enjoyable way to run.
While in recent weeks, travel, sickness, and a new job have thrown me off my sprinting goal, the times that I’ve sprinted this year have been my favorite workout sessions — and they’ve been made particularly enjoyable by the company of my soccer ball.
The first time I went, I barely noticed that I was running. I was so excited to chase after the ball, launch it into the air, and then run across the field to gather it when it ricocheted off the boards. Forty minutes later, my lungs fully open, I was soaked with sweat, hungry and happy. I’d had so much fun.
This might seem obvious, but fun is one of the most effective strategies for building a workout routine.
Lying on the most autonomous end of the Self-Determination Theory continuum, fun is about as intrinsic as you can get. And as we’ve seen, intrinsic motivation tends to drive exercise consistency. It’s not the only type of motivation you may need, but it’s the kind with the most staying power. And fun is especially potent.
In an oft-cited paper from 1997, researchers compared two groups of exercisers — those in a tae kwon do class and those in an aerobics class. Along with learning that the tae kwon do participants had more enjoyment motives (while aerobics participants had more body-related motives), the researchers found that, in both groups, exercisers who were driven by enjoyment motives kept coming back to the classes over a longer period of time.
In fact, “only the enjoyment [aka fun] motive emerged as a significant predictor” of higher attendance and lower dropout rates. The more a person enjoyed a workout session, the more likely they were to come back for the next one.
In a second study written about in the same paper, researchers surveyed members of a university fitness center over the course of a month. Every time participants came to the fitness center, they signed in and out — and upon signing out, they were prompted to rate the workout session for length, challenge, and enjoyment. Those who most consistently returned for additional workouts tended to give their sessions high enjoyment ratings.
These findings tracked with previous studies where long-term exercisers shared that they kept participating because they enjoyed the activity, while other study subjects said they quit exercise programs because they weren’t fun.1
Fun fuels motivation — and if working out is fun, we’re all more likely to do it.
But how do you make working out fun?
Especially if you’ve had a stinky relationship with exercise for as long as you can remember? Or if you feel self-conscious at the gym or at the park or at that trendy studio fitness class everyone’s talking about?
Fun workouts come in all shapes and sizes. They can be fun because of the type of movement (dance, lifting, yoga), the pace of the workout, how it’s broken up (or not), the class setting (or not), or any other number of factors. You may have to try a few things to find what you enjoy the most — or you might discover right away that circuit training or cartwheels or calisthenics is the spice you’ve been missing from your life.
Here are a few ways to start looking:
1. Mine your past.
What type of movement did you enjoy as a kid?
Think back to before puberty and/or self-consciousness set in. Did you like to climb all over the playground in ways it wasn’t built for? Do somersaults in the grass? Run at full tilt down the sidewalk? Race your friends on your bike with the handlebar tassels flying? Was there a sport you enjoyed in gym class or a team you loved playing for?
Identify the things you enjoyed back then and think about ways you can incorporate some version into your workout routine. Maybe you’ll spend a session each week practicing gymnastics skills or riding your bike or racing cars on foot.
It may take some creative thinking, but there is a grownup way to participate in your inner child’s favorite way to move. And more often than you might think, you can do the exact same thing you did as a kid. It just might take a little more courage to do somersaults at your public park than it did when you were little.
2. Try every class at your gym until you find something you like.
This one is pretty self-explanatory. Most gyms today offer a variety of workout classes: Zumba, HIIT, bootcamp, yoga, spin, etc. If you’re not sure what you like, try them all — and assess the workout afterward for enjoyment on your choice of a scale from 1 to 5, or 1 to 10, or absolutely never again to I’ll be back at 5 a.m.
If classes aren’t for you (I’m not a fan, myself), wear some earplugs to drown out the noise and use the sessions to learn movements and ways of designing workouts. You can take those concepts and use them in the relative quiet of the normal gym floor.
3. That thing you’ve always been curious about but too afraid to try? Sign up and show up.
Maybe you’ve always wanted to try hot yoga or weightlifting or CrossFit. The time is now. Sign up, pay up, and show up. Even if you’re super nervous.
True story (and maybe TMI): When I first started CrossFit, I was so nervous before every workout that I always had to use the bathroom as soon as I got to the gym. But I loved CrossFit right away and wished I’d tried it sooner.
Your curiosity is your friend. Follow it.
If you’re too focused on a particular fitness goal to spend precious time adding fun movements, infuse fun into your workouts through gamification.
Often, this takes the form of some sort of competition. Maybe you work out with a friend who’s about the same fitness level as you, and your conditioning workouts become self-contained races. Maybe you set small, incremental goals that come with rewards. Maybe you challenge yourself to complete every circuit in a faster time or with a higher weight.
Or maybe you just add some play to your workout: run sprints while chasing a soccer ball, dance or stand on one foot between lifting sets, practice handstands at the end of each workout, or swing on the pullup rig.
Small tweaks like these can go a long way in making your workout less of a drudge and more like a trip to the (indoor, badly lit, grownup) playground.
Once you’ve found something you enjoy, make it a regular part of your routine. Some things will work better as once or twice a week activities. Others could be part of every single workout. Whether you’re just starting a workout routine or you’ve been working out for years, give yourself permission to add something fun to every workout session.
I grew up playing soccer, but I stumbled upon sprinting as a fun way to move when I was in high school.
Fun, though, wasn’t my initial motivation.
Like many girls, my primary goal was to change how I looked. I thought my thighs were flabby, and when I asked my older brother what I could do to tone them, he told me (after making a face) that sprints would probably work.
I started going to the park to run sprints, and soon found that I loved running at full speed. The wind in my face, my breath rushed, lungs stinging, legs and arms pumping in unison — it was as if my legs were made for this. My enjoyment of sprinting soon overshadowed my desire for toned thighs. The more I was motivated by fun, the less I was motivated by appearance.
I sprinted regularly through college and immediately after college. Soccer and sprinting were my fun gateways into the world of fitness. And I think it’s because they were fun that I continued working out. If I’d been introduced to exercise via long sessions on treadmills and ellipticals, I would have tapped out after 5 minutes and probably never taken a weightlifting class.
Our bodies — all of them — are designed for movement, and for joy in movement. And fun is a powerful motivator because what you find fun is entirely up to you.
You may not have found your fun workout yet, but I’m sure it exists. Keep experimenting, keep trying new things, keep ignoring the self-consciousness that tries to hold you back, and you will find it. If you hate what you’ve been doing, feel the freedom to quit and try something completely different.
Chances are once you find what’s fun, you’ll be eager to come back for more.
Recommended Reading
A Chronic Illness Upended My Life. Could I Still Run a Marathon? (Outside)
Deep Core Exercises: 3 moves to improve balance and ease lower back pain (Stylist)
What’s coming up?
Hyping up the post-workday workout.
Perrin (1979) and Boothby, Tungatt, and Townsend (1981) as cited in the 1997 paper “Intrinsic Motivation and Exercise Adherence”.
"Our bodies — all of them — are designed for movement, and for joy in movement."
👏💯🙏