FITNESS How to make exercise a habit

Willpower wanes, so don’t rely on it


Personal Trainer
Paul O'Brien

If someone you trusted offered you something that was good for your health, would help to improve your work performance, increase your self-esteem and help you live longer, you’d bite their hand off for it, right?! Of course, regular exercise does all this and much, much more. Trusted experts consistently inform us of the myriad benefits available through exercise. Yet, still most people struggle with making it a regular part of their lives. Why?

Decisions, decisions
We are creatures of habit. Look at any of the thousand tasks we automatically perform routinely: Dressing each morning, brushing our teeth, eating, driving the car. We have performed these actions so many times that they have become part of our learned behaviour. We do them automatically, without having to waste energy thinking about them.
Now, why is it so difficult to make exercise an automatic behaviour? It may be down to willpower. When faced with trying to become more active, we normally recruit our willpower to help. Think about this scenario. You have set a goal to get up five mornings a week to go for a jog. You wake in the morning and your goal pops into your head. Do you want to get out of bed and go for a jog? No way, there are more attractive options, right?!
Enter willpower, which you use to drag yourself from beneath the cosy duvet. The next challenge is choosing which gear to wear – more willpower. Dig out your shoes, choose a route and decide how long you will jog for. Each of these decisions requires willpower to suppress the voice in your head that tells you it’s just easier to go back to bed.
The problem is that research has shown that the more we employ our willpower, the more we wear it out. Eventually, it’s exhausted and we succumb to the inevitable. After two or three mornings, we no longer have the willpower to crawl out from under the duvet and bang goes our goal! It seems we are wired to act this way. When given a choice between behaviours, our brain will always choose the one that is habitual and easy. It will, in the words of one researcher, ‘always choose the path of least resistance’.

Path of least resistance
Therein lies the key. The secret to making exercise a habit in our lives lies in removing the barriers that exist and make it difficult for our brains to choose it as the easy option. The less brain energy is used in making the decision, the less willpower is involved and the more likely you are to stick with the plan.
Looking again at our example, what simple steps could you take to create a path of least resistance? Well, you could plan your route the night before. You could also hang your gear out and place your trainers beside your bed. You now don’t need to focus on these things once you get out of bed; they lie along the path of least resistance.

Paul O’Brien is a personal trainer and life coach based in Westport.