What are your steps to exercise success?

Well, it’s about a month into the new year. How’re you feeling about exercise these days? What steps could you take right now – today – if you wanted to ensure your exercise success?

I read a sheet on this recently from a health club. Here is what they recommend. What would you recommend?

Five Steps to Exercise Success

1. Make it personal – What works for you: for your lifestyle, time constraints, budget, likes, dislikes?
2. Make it fit – Schedule time every day or whatever your frequency is. Work blocks of exercise into your schedule.
3. Set some goals – Set a long-term goal and break it into weekly or monthly targets (amount of weight to lose, amount of weight to benchpress).
4. Reward your efforts – Celebrate successes! Reward your commitment to improving your health. Try to make the reward not food.
5. Get back on track – Anything can get you off track (a trip out of town, cold weather, a bit of a cold) – how will you get back on? Can you plan to restart, maybe with lower weights or half the exercise time to readjust.

Ok, and what would I recommend as my steps to success in exercise?

My Steps to Exercise Success

1. Get to the gym – Decide how many times a week, and go those times hell or highwater.
2. Play and Have Fun – Vary your routine sometimes or go with a friend or go to a weights or cardio class to play around with it and see what you like. Say hi to other people at the gym, get curious, enjoy it.
3. Push yourself (e.g. Interval train) – go mild, then increase and go hard, then go mild, then increase and go hard (Body for Life has a good description of this). Interval training has a faster effect on your body, and it keeps you in the moment more about the exercising, doesn’t allow your mind to wander – it must be focused on the exercise.
4. Reward yourself sporadically but often – Set yourself incremental goals like as one or two pounds per week weight loss or particular increase in weight, and reward yourself by getting on the phone with a good friend or by stopping by a goodwill and getting anything you like.

What do you think?
Q: What are your steps to exercise success?