This isn’t your car, maintaining a reasonable exercise schedule can be difficult but not impossible. “Maintain the Chain: Easy Tips for Exercise Motivation,” by Laura Helbling, for Activity appearing in Southern Living Magazine provides easy tips for motivating yourself and managing an exercise schedule.

I am not an exercise person. I’ve never been athletic, and I didn’t make working out a priority at all in college (Who did?). But now that I have a fairly regular work schedule, I decided to change that. I chose to start with Jazzercise for two important reasons: 1) There’s a class offered in my office building, so I can just walk right down after work. 2) There was a promotion going on, so the cost was reasonable.

I’m now proud to say that since I started seven weeks ago, I have missed just one class. Only one other person in my class can boast the same thing, and it’s a big deal to me given my humble fitness beginnings. This reminded me of  a post I read on lifehacker.com a little over a year ago about Jerry Seinfeld’s motivation technique.

Jerry wanted to make himself write one joke per day, so he put a calendar on his wall and put a big red x on every day that he did it. The idea is that after several days you see a chain, and the goal is not to break the chain. It’s actually a pretty compelling idea, especially because once you miss one day, it’s easier to skip another.

You could easily adapt this to any size calendar, actual or virtual. There’s also a Web site called dontbreakthechain.com, where you click on days to turn them red. You can view up to a year of dates at a time, and it calculates how many days non-stop you’ve met your goal.

My Jazzercise classes are only two days per week, so they don’t lend themselves as easily to this strategy, but I could create one for exercise in general, even if it’s just a long walk.

Keep it simple, keep it going, even if you hit a few bumps in the road. If you fall or stumble just start over, pretend it’s the beginning of your goal again and keep going.

Does your ride need an oil change? Peace, love and motor oil!

MikeZ_we all fall but the winners, get up again.

Please consult your physician before starting any exercise or weight loss program.
Your physician is your very best resource.