The 3 barriers to regular exercise and how you can skip over all of them

Most people start a new fitness program with great intentions.

You sign up at the gym or buy a new bike, and for a few weeks, it’s great. You’re feeling better and you’re really getting into it.

But a few months down the track things have changed. You haven’t been back to the gym and your new bike is in the garage collecting dust. We’ve all been there.

You’re not to blame for this. It’s not because you lack the commitment, or you don’t want to get fitter. It’s not because you don’t have the ability, or you don’t try hard enough.

It’s because life happens.

You need to work overtime to get that promotion and you don’t have time for the gym.

You go out with your friends on a Saturday night and the two-hour bike ride you had planned on Sunday morning gets canned.

And that’s fair enough. Everyone’s needs to live a little.

Six months since you signed up at the gym you cancel your membership because it’s no longer worth it. The results you hoped to achieve now seem more unlikely than ever.

The good news is this: There’s three main reasons you didn’t achieve your fitness goals. Here’s what they are and how you’re going to conquer them.

 

Reason # 1 Not enough time.

Research tells us that one of the main reasons people give up regular exercise is that they don’t have enough time. In my view, this isn't an "excuse". I think it makes perfect sense.

It’d be great to spend an hour in the gym 5 days a week, take a few selfies of your progress and curate the perfect online dating profile. 

But when you have a full time job and a family, you struggle to find the time to go to the bathroom without being interrupted.

Life’s busy, your schedule is jam packed, and fitness is something you vaguely remember from your twenties.

What makes it worse is that we're always being told we need to be more active. That's great, but when can we fit it in?

Here’s the thing: your own health and fitness shouldn’t be something that you compromise.

And it doesn’t have to be.

Skipping is one of the most efficient forms of exercise out there. There’s loads of studies that show how many more calories you’re able to burn skipping compared to the same amount of time jogging.

But it isn’t just that. You can skip just about anywhere. And that means there isn’t travel time either side of a workout, like there is when you go to the gym.

You can take your skipping rope to work and do a twenty minute session on your lunch break, you can do a jump rope workout in the living room when the kids are having a nap.

Twenty minutes is all you need to feel great and smash your fitness goals.

By the time you’ve finished your workout, you’d probably only just be arriving at the gym. By the time you’ve had a shower and the endorphins are flowing, you’d still be trying to figure out the settings on the treadmill.

You get the point. It’s easier to maintain skipping because you don’t need as much time to do a really effective workout.

You’ll achieve better results in much less time and you’ll feel heaps better for it.

And just like that one of the main barriers to improving your fitness has disappeared. So grab a rope and get started! 

 

Reason # 2 Exercise is boring!

Another main reason people give up an exercise program is because they find it boring (by now you’re surely nodding in agreement).  

Running can be really hard and monotonous, especially if you’re someone who hasn’t been active for a while.

Pounding the footpath for 30 minutes and feeling like a 90-year-old after it doesn’t exactly have you feeling desperate for more.

It can be similar at the gym. You complete a set of weights and then wait a minute to do the next one (boring). Even when you feel good about what can do in the gym, you don’t always enjoy the process.

When it boils down to it, the reason exercise can be boring is because most of the time you aren’t learning anything new. Instead, you’ll just get better at things you already know how to do, like riding a bike or going for a run.

But skipping isn’t like that. Skipping is about learning. Hear me out.

You might already know the basics, and you probably skipped when you were a kid.

But there’s literally no end to the number of skills you can master and develop.

There’s loads of guides and tutorials online that will help you along. And there’s an amazing jump rope community online – and who sometimes meet up in person – who will welcome you with open arms.

Thinking less about exercise for exercise sake and more about learning new skills is a game changer.

The fitness and health improvements of skipping become a by-product of skipping, rather than the focus of the activity.

It’s similar to the difference between playing a team sport with your friends (fun, right?!), and doing exercise for the sake of exercise (boring!).

So as much as it is good for your fitness, skipping is also an awesome learning process, and that feels great.

And just like that, exercise is no longer boring. You’re learning and getting fit at the same time.

 

Reason # 3 It’s too damn expensive!

Your health is literally the most important thing you have and gyms are price accordingly.

They cost a lot! If you’re going regularly, you’re probably getting your money’s worth and that’s great.

But the problem is that most people don’t. According to some research, Australians spend 2.4 billion per year on unused gym memberships!

And so if you can’t go regularly, the expense adds up and you don’t get the health returns you deserve.

I’m no mathematician but think about it like this. Say you pay $20 a week for a gym membership and go twice a week, that $10 a workout. For the full year you pay $1040.

Paying $10 for a single workout isn’t too bad, although isn't exactly cost effective.

But say you buy a skipping rope for $28 and use it twice a week for a year. You use it 104 times. That’s 27 cents per workout.

Based on that simple calculation, skipping is 37 times more cost effective than the gym.

And it’s not just that. Like I said above, because it only takes 20 minutes and you can do it anywhere, you’ll probably skip more than twice a week.

Use your skipping rope three times a week for the year and it costs 18 cents a workout. Now skipping is 56 times more cost effective than the gym.

It’s not just that skipping will save you a whole lot of money, but because it’s such an effective workout, you can achieve much better results in a fraction of the time, for a fraction of the expense.

It's literally one of the best investments in your health you can make!

You might be thinking that there are things that the gym offers that a skipping rope can’t; personal training, structured workouts, accountability.

And that’s fair enough.

But again, I encourage you to check out the jump rope community online. There’s loads of videos and tutorials on Youtube, and lots of social media pages, including my own, that share regular workouts for you to try at home.

I design jumprope workouts so you don’t have to!

And if you’re really into the gym and don’t want to give it up – that’s fine too. Because one of the best things about skipping is that you can do it anywhere. So, take your jump rope to the gym!

In summary

Maintaining regular exercise is hard. No one else can do it for you and it does take a bit of commitment. 

You’ve probably tried regular exercise loads of time and had varying degrees of success. For one reason or another, you stop exercising and you don’t achieve the results you’re going for.

Don't beat yourself up over it. Because you're not to blame. The three barriers to regular exercise I've mentioned in this blog are real. 

You're short on time, exercise can be boring, and it can get really expensive.

The best thing about skipping is that it helps you overcome each of those barriers. 

And that’s why skipping is so damn awesome. You don’t need much time, you won’t get bored, and it’ll cost you about the same price as a pizza.

So give it a go. Get a skipping rope today, and in six months’ time you might just find you’re fitter than you’ve ever been.

(And by the way, if you’ve made it to the end of this article, it’s probably taken you about 7 minutes to read. You’d be a third of the way through an awesome jump rope workout!)