Before college, I never exercised. I am by no means athletic. I did not play sports at all, nor did I work out. But in the last two years, the seemingly impossible happened. I became a person who can work out 4-5 days per week without getting sore. And I actually enjoy it! I can finally walk up five flights of stairs without getting completely winded!
After eighteen and a half years of avoiding exercise, I’ve managed to become one of those super annoying people everyone hates who talks about how amazing working out is. I know that a lot of college students want to get into health and fitness, so I decided to write a practical guide about the process I took when I started working out. I hope you enjoy.
Step 1//Give Yourself A Damn Good Reason
This goes for everything you do in life. If you don’t have a good motive to work out, you’re not going to work out! It’s that simple. And your reason needs to be very important to you. It can’t be a half-hearted reason like, “I want to be healthier.” That may be a starting point for some people, but it’s not enough to motivate you to regularly go to the gym.
Here’s the reason I started going to the gym: “I’m paying for it anyway.” Sure, I had an interest in working out and becoming healthier in college, but the fact that my tuition was paying for the gym was my greatest motivator. The underlying layer of my exercise goal was that I knew that the healthy habits I establish in college will follow me in my twenties, but that wouldn’t be enough to get me to the gym. The fact that not going to the campus gym is a waste of money was.
So here’s my question for you: Why do you want to get fit in college?
Step 2//Visit Your School’s Gym To Get Your Bearings
I know a lot of people who are scared of the gym (I was one of them). Being surrounded by a bunch of very buff men lifting weights can be very intimidating, especially if you’re a first-timer. Everything I knew about exercise was from high school P.E, so I knew it would be a learning curve.
Before I started using the gym, I went inside the building with no intention of working out. I just looked around and got my bearings. Most campus gyms make you sign a waiver before allowing you to use it, so you can do that while you’re there. I checked out the workout class schedule and asked people questions. It really helped knowing where everything was once I started working out the next day.
Step 3//Find An Accountability Buddy
If you are like me, you hate going to the gym with other people. I don’t want to talk to anyone when I exercise. I just want to listen to music and work out. Your accountability buddy doesn’t have to be someone you work out with. It can just be someone who asks you about your fitness goal and how it’s going.
My accountability buddy was my mom. At the time, she was also starting to get into health and fitness, so we had something in common. Every day after school (I was a commuter my first two years of college), she would ask me if I had worked out and what I did, and I’d tell her. Your accountability buddy doesn’t have to do much. They just have to ask.
And if working out with a friend works for you, you should do it. Regularly scheduling a time to meet at the gym will keep you accountable.
Step 4//Figure Out What Kind Of Workouts You Like
The best advice I can give you is to take workout classes. As you already know, I was never an athlete. I had no idea how to properly lift weights or to do push-ups with a good form. I had no idea how to exercise safely or productively.
Most universities hire trainers to teach classes at the gym. There tend to be a wide variety of classes like Bootcamp, Zumba, cycling, kickboxing, etc. I recommend you try all of these classes multiple times to figure out what you like.
I already knew I would like the dance classes, but also took a bunch of weight lifting classes because I wanted to learn how to do it properly. Now, I absolutely love weight training and can do it on my own in the regular gym instead of in the group workout classes.
I’ve also become accustomed to cycling classes. Spin classes have been all the rage the last few years because they are such a good workout, but I hated it the first time I took it. I had never sweat so much in my life and I was so sore the next day, but I kept going back. I don’t even get sore anymore after exercising because working out with trainers pushes me past my limits and makes me stronger.
After you figure out what types of exercise you like, it gets easier to work out and makes you want to go to the gym.
Step 5//Integrate Working Out Into Your Daily & Weekly Schedule
It is no secret that college students are busy. We have so much to do and barely enough time to do it, so how are we expected to add exercising to our to-do list?!
I thought that this would be hard to do, but I’ve found that prioritizing working out and scheduling it into my weekly and daily routines have allowed me to exercise consistently (even during midterms and finals week).
First, on a sheet of paper, write down the times 7:00 AM all the way down to 11:00 PM from the top to bottom of a sheet of notebook paper. Do this for each day of the week.
- Write down all your classes next to the times they occur.
- Write out your work schedule
- Write down the times of your club meeting next to the time under the correct day of the week.
- Write out any other recurring weekly tasks or meetups.
- Look at the times you are free and choose which hours you will work out.
- Once you’ve chosen a time for your daily work out, fill in the rest of the page with times you plan on doing homework and studying.
Those are the exact steps I took when I started scheduling my workouts in my first semester of college. After choosing a time to work out each day, I was able to do it consistently. In fact, I started looking forward to going to the gym because it gave me a much-needed productive break from studying.
Related – My Current College Workout Routine (Freshman Year)
Step 6//Buy Workout Clothes (It doesn’t have to be expensive)
If you want to work out multiple times per week, you need proper work out clothes. You also need more than one set. I had four sets of workout clothes (shirts, sports bras, and workout pants) that I would rotate out every week. I didn’t go to the gym wearing a new trendy outfit every week. I wore the same outfits multiple times and no one cared. You just need clothes that you can sweat in and that you don’t need to wash every day. I’m not telling you to wear clothes that make you feel like crap. I strongly believe in the power of wearing clothes you look and feel good in. I’m just saying you can find those clothes in Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart and can re-wear them more than three times.
Step 7//Be Okay With Not Being Consistent
I think the reason I was able to get fit in college so effectively was that I didn’t beat myself up for skipping workouts. It happened very rarely, but I gave myself a lot of grace whenever I had to skip one.
An example of how I fail at giving myself grace is with blogging. When I am consistently posting on schedule whether that’s a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule during the summer or on a Monday/Thursday schedule during the school year, I am very proud and keep going. But once I stop and skip a day, I procrastinate more. I beat myself up about not posting the previous day, but I also convince myself that there’s no point in continuing my schedule and have to start that momentum all over again.
When it came to working out, if I skipped a day, I’d just say whatever and go to the gym the next day. I’m a college student. I have homework and tests to study for. It’s okay that I don’t have time to go to the gym some days as long as I don’t use that as an excuse all the time.
Step 8//Celebrate Your Progress
I didn’t really have a weight loss goal when I got into college. I had no idea what to expect. I just was just wanted to get into the habit of working out regularly. A huge point of progress for me was that I actually enjoyed and looked forward to working out. I became one of those annoying people who encouraged others to exercise and talked about all the benefits of it. I felt so much more energized and could really feel the difference in my body.
A lot of people also told me that it looked like I had lost weight. Whenever they’d say that, I’d joke, “Where?” because my height has always made me slim and I had actually gained weight in my freshman year because I had gained a lot of muscle.
I didn’t really take these comments seriously until my dad said, “It’s not that you look skinnier. You look more athletic.” I felt very proud of that fact because athletic is literally the last word I would use to describe myself. The fact that my body felt stronger and that others could see the difference made me very happy. Some of my friends start working out with the intention of weight loss and I know they feel great when others notice the change in their body. Celebrate that progress!
On a final note, I do want to say this. You are probably going to gain weight Freshman year anyway. I heard this at some point in high school: Nineteen is generally the age your body starts becoming more womanly, and I’ve definitely seen that in the last few years. There’s more cushion to my hips, my boobs are bigger, and I’m just curvier than I used to be (which I love because I was a stick before). Don’t sh*t on yourself about these things because they’re going to happen anyway. That is a healthy type of weight gain. Don’t think of it as the Freshman Fifteen.
I hope this post helps and will motivate you to start working out more in college. I’m sorry for being AWOL for the last few weeks. I did not follow my blogging schedule at all. I’ve been super busy, but that’s not the reason I haven’t been blogging. I could’ve made time for it if I hadn’t been binge-watching Dear White People and 13 Reasons Why on Netflix. I’ve also been sitting on a very personal blog post I’ve been trying to write for the past few weeks.
Anyway, I’ll be able to write a lot more again this month. I’ll see you on Friday!
Why do you want to start working out in college and what is your plan to do so? What is your favorite workout class?