by Donovan Baldwin

Created on: August 16, 2009

The hardest part of making exercise a part of your routine is not going to be much different from making anything else you have not been doing a part of your routine.

However, many people have a mental or emotional block when it comes to exercise. Like mathematics for many of us, or learning a foreign language, there is simply something which prevents us from sticking with exercise long enough for it to become part of our lives and for us to recognize and experience the benefits possible if we DO stick with it!

In my experience, while there could be many factors to consider, one major self-imposed obstacle is probably responsible for more people NOT making exercise a part of their routine than anything else.

The obstacle can be classified as "size", I guess.

By size I mean the overall committment which most people feel they must make to a new exercise program as well as the lifelong committment they may see looming before them. It is overwhelming!

However, this obstacle is not isolated to simply the area of exercise. Whenever people try to make lifestyle changes, they tend to bite off more than they can chew. This is because they believe that they should be doing everything and doing it right and doing it right now. The truth is that they will be more successful if they concentrate more on making exercise a habit than on "exercising" per se.

Most people starting an exercise program tend to overdo things anyway. This is another topic for discussion entirely, but the point I want to make here is that after several years (a couple of decades) being involved with exercise and fitness, and after nearly 10 years of researching and writing about exercise, I have reached the conclusion that most people fail to make exercise a part of their routine, simply because they try to do too much too soon.

It would actually be better if someone would plan to make one small but regular step until it became a habit and then only to begin to expand that initial step once they feel that it has become a part of their daily routine.

Let's take the case of someone who is genuinely out-of-shape but who wants to begin an exercise program. Usually, they will go get some books from the bookstore or the library, read up on the subject a little, buy some sort of outfit and some equipment, and then get started. After a short period, minutes, hours, or days, they will begin to feel dread at the approach of the next scheduled workout, make their workout easier, do it less often,

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