Maybe I don't need a gym anymore

Today marks exactly two months since I’ve been able to stick to working out at home about 3-4x a week for the first time. I think now it’s different because of three things: mindset, equipment, accompanying habit. Here is how I did it:

Btw. I know that two months is not a big deal for many but it was for me. I had no problems with being consistent when hitting the gym, but never when working out at home.

Mindset

I focused not on my numbers but on working out to make my body healthier and stronger. I tend to sit for prolonged periods, so I wanted to do something about my tight muscles and mobility issues.

I found myself a routine I was excited about that let me start slow and then provided enough of a challange with exercise progressions. This was crucial. Knowing what to do every day and how to challange myself was the key to keeping it interesting.

Equipment

With a routine set up, I knew what I’m gonna be doing each workout. This helped narrow down what is the essential equipment that will allow me to do that.

I ended up buying a pair of rings, a door frame mounted pull up bar and a set of rubber bands, but you can get really creative with your chairs, kitchen table and some bedsheets.

This was another game changer. Before, when I was trying to work out at home, I couldn’t replicate all the movement patterns I was used to doing at the gym. I didn’t have a place to do pullups or rows, so I’ve been finishing my workouts earlier, feeling less satisfied.

Accompanying habit

For the first month, I decided to stick to only one thing. Working out every other day. Only then, I added one more thing to bump up my everyday activity - I started doing morning walks around my neighborhood or at the local park.

I found out that tracking those two habits made me more accountable. Even though I wasn’t working out every day, there was something I could check off of my list on a daily basis. This helped me stick to my habit tracker even more.

After that, I tried to add a few more things that I wanted to work on, but I found out trying to develop more than three new habits was too much for me. I settled on a 3-4x a week strength workout, a daily walk and at least 10k steps as a third thing.

All that seems to be working fine for me and I just did 3 sets of 5 pull ups with a good form for the first time in my life.