By Will Duru, BSc (Hons) Sport and Exercise Science, Award winning Personal Trainer with over 10 years of experience in strength training
Marcus joined my gym in January with fire in his eyes. He bought new trainers, signed up for a year, downloaded three fitness apps and told everyone he knew that this was his year. By March, I stopped seeing him.
This pattern repeats itself thousands of times every year. People start strong, full of motivation and good intentions, then quietly disappear within weeks. The gym keeps their money. Their goals remain unfulfilled.
After training clients for over a decade, I have watched this cycle play out countless times. But I have also seen the opposite. I have seen people who seemed unlikely to succeed become the most consistent members of any gym. The difference between these two groups has nothing to do with willpower, genetics or how much they want it.
The difference is their approach to habit formation.
Why Motivation Always Fails
Here is something most fitness advice gets wrong: motivation is not the foundation of consistency. Motivation is temporary. It spikes when you set a new goal, watch an inspiring video or feel unhappy with your reflection. Then it fades. Always.
Waiting until you feel motivated to exercise means you will train sporadically at best. Some weeks you might go four times. Other weeks, zero. This inconsistency produces minimal results, which further reduces motivation, creating a downward spiral that ends with cancelled memberships and dusty running shoes.
The people who train consistently for years do not rely on motivation. They rely on systems. They have built structures into their lives that make training automatic, something that happens regardless of how they feel on any given day.
This is what separates those who transform their bodies from those who remain stuck in the same cycle year after year.
The Truth About Habit Formation
A habit is simply a behaviour that requires minimal conscious thought. You do not decide to brush your teeth each morning. You just do it. The goal is to make exercise feel the same way.
Habits form through repetition in consistent contexts. When you perform the same action in the same situation repeatedly, your brain creates a shortcut. Eventually, the situation itself triggers the behaviour automatically.
This has practical implications for building a gym habit:
Consistency of time matters. Training at the same time each day strengthens the habit loop far more than training at random times. Your brain learns that 6am means gym, or that lunch break means workout. The time becomes the trigger.
Consistency of location matters. Training at the same gym, in the same area of your home, or even using the same locker creates environmental cues that reinforce the habit.
Consistency of sequence matters. What you do before and after training becomes part of the ritual. If you always make coffee, put on your gym clothes, then drive to the gym, that sequence becomes automatic over time.
The first few weeks require effort. You have to think about it, plan for it, push yourself to do it. But somewhere around the six to eight week mark, something shifts. The behaviour starts to feel normal. Skipping a workout feels stranger than doing one.
Start Embarrassingly Small
The biggest mistake people make when starting a gym habit is doing too much too soon. They go from zero training to five days per week. They spend two hours in the gym. They leave so sore they can barely walk for days.
This approach feels productive but destroys habit formation. When exercise is painful, exhausting and time consuming, your brain resists it. Every workout becomes a battle of willpower, and willpower is a finite resource that depletes quickly.
Instead, start so small it feels almost pointless. If you currently do not exercise at all, commit to ten minutes twice per week. That is it. Just show up, do something light, and leave.
This sounds counterintuitive. Ten minutes twice a week will not transform your body. But that is not the point. The point is to establish the habit. Once the habit exists, increasing duration and intensity is straightforward. Building the habit in the first place is the hard part.
I have seen clients transform their lives starting with commitments as small as “I will do five press ups every morning before my shower.” The simplicity made it impossible to fail. Within months, those five press ups had grown into full training sessions, but the foundation was that tiny, consistent starting point.
Remove Every Possible Barrier
Every obstacle between you and your workout is a potential reason to skip it. Your job is to eliminate as many of these obstacles as possible.
Prepare the night before. Pack your gym bag, lay out your clothes, fill your water bottle. When morning comes, everything is ready. You do not have to think, search or decide. You just go.
Choose a convenient gym. The best gym in the world is useless if it takes 45 minutes to reach. A decent gym five minutes from your home or workplace will serve you far better. Convenience beats quality when it comes to consistency.
Reduce decision making. Decide what exercises you will do before you arrive. Follow a programme rather than making it up as you go. Decision fatigue is real, and every choice you have to make increases the chance you will choose to skip the whole thing.
Have backup plans. What happens when the gym is closed? When you are travelling? When you only have 15 minutes? Having alternatives ready means unexpected circumstances do not derail your consistency.
One of my clients realised she was skipping her morning workouts because she did not want to wash her hair afterwards. A simple change, switching to evening workouts when hair washing was already planned, solved the problem entirely. Sometimes the barriers are small and seemingly ridiculous, but they matter.
Attach Training to Existing Habits
One of the most effective strategies for building new habits is linking them to existing ones. This technique uses the automatic nature of established behaviours to trigger new ones.
Think about what you already do consistently every day. You wake up. You eat meals. You commute to work. You watch television in the evening. You go to bed. These existing habits can serve as anchors for your training habit.
For example:
After I finish my morning coffee, I will go to the gym.
After I arrive home from work, I will change into my gym clothes immediately.
After I drop the kids at school, I will drive directly to the gym.
The key word is “after.” You are creating a sequence where one behaviour automatically leads to another. Over time, the first behaviour triggers thoughts of the second without any conscious effort.
This works because you are not trying to create a new habit from nothing. You are attaching it to something that already has momentum in your life.
Make It Enjoyable (Or At Least Not Miserable)
Here is something the fitness industry often gets wrong: suffering is not a requirement for progress. You do not have to hate your workouts for them to work.
In fact, the opposite is true. If you dread your training sessions, you will eventually stop doing them. Willpower can force you through for a while, but not forever. Enjoyment, or at least the absence of misery, is essential for long term consistency.
This does not mean workouts should be easy. Challenge and discomfort are part of the process. But there is a difference between productive discomfort and genuine misery.
Find activities you do not hate. If you despise running, do not build your fitness routine around running. If you find weight machines boring, use free weights. If you hate training alone, find a class or a training partner. There are countless ways to exercise. Find ones that suit you.
Control the intensity. Pushing yourself to complete exhaustion every session is not necessary and often counterproductive. Most of your training should feel challenging but manageable. Save the truly brutal sessions for occasionally, not daily.
Celebrate the feeling afterwards. Almost everyone feels better after training than before. The mood boost, the sense of accomplishment, the physical relief of moving your body. Pay attention to these feelings. Let them become part of why you train.
Track Your Consistency, Not Just Your Results
Most people track the wrong things. They obsess over the weight on the scale, the measurements of their waist, the numbers on the barbell. These matter, but they fluctuate unpredictably and often fail to reflect genuine progress.
What you should track first is consistency itself. Did you show up? Did you complete your planned sessions this week? This is the metric that actually predicts long term success.
A simple approach is to mark each training day on a calendar. Your goal is to build a chain of marks, an unbroken streak of consistency. This visual representation of your commitment becomes motivating in itself. You do not want to break the chain.
Over time, the chain grows longer. Weeks become months. Months become years. The person who trains twice a week every week for a year has completed over 100 sessions. That consistency produces results regardless of whether each individual session was perfect.
Results follow consistency, not the other way around. Focus on showing up, and the physical changes will come.
Plan for Setbacks Before They Happen
Life will interfere with your training. You will get ill. Work will become overwhelming. Family emergencies will arise. Holidays will disrupt your routine. This is inevitable, not a sign of failure.
The difference between people who maintain long term habits and those who abandon them is how they handle these interruptions. Most people treat a missed workout as evidence that they have failed, which leads to more missed workouts, which leads to giving up entirely.
A better approach is to expect setbacks and plan for them in advance.
The two day rule. Never miss more than two days in a row. One day off is rest. Two days is recovery. Three days is the start of a new habit, the habit of not training. After two days, do something, anything, even if it is just ten minutes.
Reduced versions. When you cannot do your full workout, have a shorter version ready. A 15 minute session is infinitely better than zero minutes. It maintains the habit even when circumstances prevent ideal training.
Restart immediately. When you do fall off track, start again the next possible day. Do not wait until Monday, until next month, until the new year. The longer you wait, the harder it becomes.
One of my most consistent clients missed three weeks due to illness. On her first day back, she did just 20 minutes of light exercise. She said it felt pathetic compared to her normal sessions. But that session was the bridge between her past consistency and her future consistency. Without it, those three weeks might have become three months.
Find Your Form of Accountability
Some people thrive with accountability, others resist it. But almost everyone benefits from some form of external structure that makes skipping workouts more difficult.
Training partners. When someone is waiting for you at the gym, you are far less likely to bail. The social commitment adds weight to your personal commitment.
Scheduled classes. Classes happen at set times whether you show up or not. This external structure removes the option to postpone indefinitely.
A coach or trainer. Paying someone to guide your training adds financial accountability. You have invested money, which creates pressure to follow through. A good trainer also provides encouragement, adjusts your programme, and notices when you start slipping.
Public commitment. Telling others about your goals can help. When people know you are trying to train consistently, you feel more obligation to follow through. This works better for some personalities than others.
The 12REPS app provides accountability through tracking and reminders. Seeing your consistency recorded, watching your progress over time, receiving prompts when you have not logged a session, these features create gentle accountability that keeps you on track.
The Identity Shift
The ultimate goal is not just to exercise regularly but to become someone who exercises. This is a subtle but powerful distinction.
When training is something you do, it remains optional. You can choose to do it or not, and on difficult days, you will often choose not to.
When training is part of who you are, skipping feels wrong. It conflicts with your identity. You are a person who trains. That is simply what you do.
This shift happens gradually through consistent action. Every time you train when you do not feel like it, you reinforce the identity. Every completed session is evidence that you are the type of person who follows through on commitments to your health.
Eventually, the question changes. It stops being “Will I train today?” and becomes “When will I train today?” The behaviour is assumed. Only the timing is in question.
This is when the habit is truly established. This is when consistency becomes effortless.
The First 90 Days
If you are starting from zero or restarting after a break, here is a practical approach for the first three months:
Days 1 to 30: Establish the Pattern
Your only goal is showing up. Train twice per week at the same times. Keep sessions short, around 30 minutes maximum. Do exercises you find tolerable. Do not worry about optimal programming or maximum intensity. Just build the routine.
Days 31 to 60: Increase Gradually
Add a third session per week. Extend duration slightly if you wish. Start following a structured programme rather than random exercises. Begin tracking your workouts properly. The habit should feel more natural now.
Days 61 to 90: Solidify and Expand
You can now train three to four times per week if desired. Push intensity higher. Focus on progressive overload and proper programming. The habit is establishing itself. Your job is to protect it and build upon it.
After 90 days of consistency, you will have completed somewhere between 25 and 40 training sessions. Your body will have changed. Your strength will have increased. But more importantly, training will feel normal. The habit will have taken root.
Marcus Returns
Remember Marcus from the beginning? He came back the following January, having spent another year frustrated with his lack of progress. This time, I suggested a different approach.
Instead of his ambitious five day plan, we started with just two sessions per week, on Tuesday and Thursday evenings after work. Instead of two hour marathons, we kept sessions to 45 minutes. Instead of changing everything at once, we focused only on consistency.
He was sceptical. It felt too easy. He wanted to do more.
I told him the same thing I will tell you: more is not better. Better is better. And right now, better means showing up reliably.
Twelve months later, Marcus had trained consistently throughout the entire year. He had gradually increased to four sessions per week. He had lost 14 kilograms and added noticeable muscle. More importantly, he had become someone who trains.
“I do not think about whether to go anymore,” he told me. “It is just what I do on those days.”
That sentence represents the goal. When exercise requires no debate, no motivation, no willpower, you have built a habit that will last.
How to Get Started
Building a gym habit does not require perfect conditions, unlimited time or superhuman discipline. It requires a systematic approach that respects how habits actually form.
Start small. Remove barriers. Attach training to existing routines. Track your consistency. Plan for setbacks. Find accountability that works for you. Be patient with the process.
The 12REPS app can support this journey with structured programmes, workout tracking, video demonstrations and progress monitoring. Having a clear plan removes guesswork and makes showing up easier.
Download the app, set your schedule, and commit to the first 90 days. Not to perfect training. Not to maximum effort. Just to showing up.
Your future self will thank you.
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About the Author: Will Duru holds a BSc (Hons) in Sport and Exercise Science and is an award winning personal trainer with over 10 years of experience helping people build lasting fitness habits. He is the creator of the 12REPS app, designed to make consistent training accessible to everyone.
