Why can’t you stick with a workout plan? Why do we feel the need to hop from program to program? Why is it so hard to make a fitness habit that sticks?

I used to be the same way. Growing up, my parents made me try a bunch of sports. I played a year of soccer, a year of baseball, a year of basketball… you get the point.

Eventually I quit all of them. Why? Because I sucked.

And because I was terrible, I hated every minute of it. I didn’t like being weak and slow, so why seek out opportunities to remind me of that?

Reframe: I was bad at sports precisely because I didn’t enjoy them.

Of course I lacked experience and talent. Some people are just naturals— I wasn’t. Tough.

But how do we get better at sports?

1. Practice

2. Practice

3. Practice

It takes long-term dedication. I wasn’t interested in anything serious. I treated my childhood sports like speed dating: I showed up, gave only a token effort, decided I wasn’t interested and moved onto the next one.

Fitness is for Life

Being fit will always be relevant. You’ll never ‘outgrow’ the desire to have more capabilities than you currently do. It will never be less useful to have the strength and mobility to live a meaningful life. Quite the opposite — it only gets harder to build these attributes.

Health is the same. At no point in your life will it become irrelevant to eat quality foods, sleep well each night and practice gratitude. We want to play the long game here.

So why do we all treat fitness like a one night stand?

They key to falling in love with exercise…is to stop thinking of it as exercise. Think of it as practice. A Physical Practice is more than a difference in semantics, it’s a difference in approach, and appreciation for the actions. Exercise is for a summer. Physical practice is for life.

I love exercising, but when I hear that, even I lose motivation.

It sounds like a means to an end. Like it’s something I do, not out of love, but out of obligation. It’s the only way to get to some end state, which we call ‘fitness’. I can’t commit to that for life. I need something I can fall in love with.

Enter practice:

The key to making physical fitness work for you is to establish a habit. Like part of your life that’s so ingrained that you don’t even question it.

Done right, you can look forward to your practice like you look forward to your morning cup of coffee. You can have the same feelings finishing your daily physical practice as you do watching a beautiful sunset.

There are several ways to build stronger habits. Here are the ones that have worked for me.

Don’t be afraid to make it fun

Fitness doesn’t need to be boring. It should be fun. It should be something you look forward to!

Personally, I find weightlifting alone to be one of the most rewarding activities. It’s so simple:

• show up

• pick up weights

• repeat until exhaustion

By doing just this, you can make measurable progress in your capacity on a session to session basis. It’s an activity that distills the art of learning and progression into one of the most pure forms.

I get so stoked to wake up and lift more than I’ve ever lifted before, and for the feeling of working hard and challenging myself. Not to mention it makes me feel great for days afterwards. So it’s something that’s just a permanent part of my life. Any time I step away from it while on vacation I’m eager to get back.

It doesn’t take me any extra energy to motivate to do it. I simply love it.

I also love climbing, but in many ways my experience with climbing is much more complicated.

With climbing it’s me against the rock (or plastic holds) so I don’t have as much control over the challenges and constraints presented for me. It’s super fun and rewarding in its own way, but the progress session to session is not possible to distill in the same way. It’s not as consistent and measurable.

So I keep this practice more informal, and use it as an opportunity to spend time outside with friends.

Don’t get married to any one modality.

Over the years I’ve varied my style of training to suit my interests:

• I started with 1 year of only yoga. I bought a 1 year membership to a local studio, paid up front on sale, and averaged over 3 sessions a week. That was awesome, but I developed some shoulder impingement and didn’t love the someone rigid structure of the ‘do what teacher says’ format of classes.

• Then I got into bodyweight fitness. Trained this for a few years, strictly using 5x5 rep scheme for strength. This was fun but I eventually started hitting strength plateaus and never put on that much muscle doing it.

• I spent a lot of time doing handstands as well, but recently a wrist injury has prevented me from practicing that.

• Recently I’ve changed my focus to a higher rep range, high intensity training with lower numbers of sets. I’m currently absolutely loving this. I’m making faster gains, putting on muscle while accumulating much less aches and pains.

Does that mean I’ll do this forever? Nope, only until it stops working. Then I’ll switch it up as I see fit, but I will keep resistance training till death do us part.

I repeat: Don’t be too married to any one modality.

Diversify your activities with multiple options.

This is a concept from finance & investing. If you put all your eggs in one basket, and the basket breaks, you’re shit outta luck.

If you get injured doing one activity, you can dial up the others during the rehab process.

If weather is bad for surfing, go on a train run instead.

You do not have to be monogamous when it comes to active hobbies.

I like to

• run

• swim

• free dive

• play spikeball

• play ping pong

• lift weights

• spear fish

• climb

• hike

And they never get jealous of each other. The skills and attributes earned from one often benefit the others. Unless you’re getting paid to specialize in just one activity, you don’t have to. Try whatever moves you!

Grow Up and Grow Old with your activities

Take some time to learn how to train and progress — whatever your sport or practice of choice is.

Progression is so exciting and rewarding. When you learn how to keep getting better at the thing, it makes the process more fun. It also open more doors down the road. Extra knowledge and experience in the activity will mean that a year or two down the road, you’ll be able to fit in with more communities who do that activity. If you take some time off for any reason, you’ll have a higher baseline of skill and fitness when you return. This helps keep the practice durable.

You don’t have to be hyper focused on attaining an externally verifiable high level of performance, but a focus on learning will keep the hobby rich and rewarding to you for your entire life.

Thanks for reading and have a great day!

-John