5 Simple Mindset Shifts To Help You Stay Active ALL Winter
1. Plan your Winter workouts (and pay for them!) in advance
Have you heard that old saying "if you fail to plan then you’re planning to fail"? Well, it’s pretty spot on! By pre-booking and pre-paying for your classes, you’ve already put something on the line before you even show up, plus you know the instructor will be expecting you and your own bank account will suffer if you press snooze. We love planning each upcoming week on the weekend previous – it’s fun, it gets you excited for your week and you already know which days you’ll score a cheeky sleep-in! And don’t feel pressured to book all your sessions for the crack of dawn either… if you have the option to schedule one or two for an evening or weekend, and that means you will be motivated for every workout, go for it!
2. Visualise how you’ll feel after the session (not how hard it seems to get there!)
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when it comes to getting to your Winter workouts is letting your mind go down a negative, no-can-do path. You know, like when you wake up and immediately your brain starts with the, “It’s so cold… it’s still dark out… my bed is so warm… I should get to work early anyway… I’m too hungry to workout…”. Those lines of thought only lead to one kind of action, hitting the snooze button! So instead of thinking about how hard it seems to get to your session, flip your thinking and visualise how great you’ll feel after the session’s over. Think about how content you’ll feel for the rest of the day once your session is done, the post-workout high you’ll be on, and how toasty warm your body will be just ten minutes after you start!
3. Book in a friend to boost your commitment
Research has proven time and time again that people (and women in particular!) are less likely to skip their workouts when a friend is joining them. For some reason, it’s a lot easier to skip out on yourself than it is on a friend! So try booking in a workout buddy, or a few, for your various sessions and make sure you check in the night before to give each other a bit of a pep up!
4. Shop your way to get-up-and-GO!
These are the winter items that help us get up and get out of the house, no matter how icky the weather is…
A good quality puffer jacket to make you feel like you’re literally wearing your warm doona/duvet out of the house!
Long, high waisted tights that keep not just your legs but also your tummy and back toasty.
A little fan-powered foot heater for the bathroom. Seriously, these are about $30-40 and you can grab them from Bunnings or Kmart/Target/etc. Pop it in your bathroom, along with your workout gear and it will literally heat up your whole bathroom in about 30 seconds flat, meaning you can dress and get ready in comfort, and by the time you’re ready to go, you’ll actually be so warm that the cool outdoor air will be a welcome treat!
If you really want to splurge, grab an artificial sunrise alarm clock (we love the LUMIE) to help you wake up. You set your ideal wake-up time, and the clock creates, you guessed it, an artificial sunrise leading up to that time. This means that you wake up to a light room and feel a lot more awake and less like hitting the snooze button.
5. Have a back-up plan that doesn’t require you to leave the house
Let’s be honest, there are some days when even the most motivated gals among us just don’t want to get out of our knickers and trek to bootcamp, so… don’t! Have a few old-school fitness DVDs, a new-school fitness app and video workouts from this blog ready to roll, so when those just-need-a-home-workout moments hit, you’re prepped with a plan. Even 15 minutes will do the trick to get you smiling as you start your day!