6 Tricks To Make 2025 Training Easier

Howdy all! This week I want to share a couple of easy tricks you can use to help make it mentally easier to get to your workouts in 2025. Hopefully these will help out especially when you work out after a long day at your job or very early in the morning maybe before work. Each one of these is quite simple but the combination of these small elements can be profound.

* Plan your workouts so you know what you're going to do in advance. This way there's no wasted time or mental energy. You can just go get started on auto-pilot without having to think, "So, what should I do today?"

* Think about doing the workout you have planned during the day while you're at your job, or at night before you go to sleep. On the commute home again focus on your upcoming training session and what you're going to be doing.

* Once you get home take care of the essentials but get to your training as soon as possible. So feed your pets and take of anything else you need but then change into your workout clothes and get to it. Sitting down and getting into email or websites or video games right when you get home are sure fire ways to fail to get to training, especially if you've been sitting a lot at your job. When I'm tempted to turn the computer on I remind myself that, "Everything will still be there on the Internet when I'm done training; I'm not going to miss anything."

* Have your workout clothes and any gear sitting out and ready to go. Like the famous story of Muhammad Ali putting his running shoes on the nightstand so it was the first thing he saw in the morning, if your gear is waiting for you it's one less thing to think about. And seeing your boxing gloves on the computer keyboard or living room table when you get home will help remind you to not get into those things but to go and train right now instead.

* Document your workouts in a training journal so can see how consistent you are over time and what you were training in. After I record each session in my journal I pay myself $1 an hour in quarters that are added to a large mason jar on my office desk next to the computer. This is a visual indicator of progress and a reminder to go workout. When one jar is full just start on another...

* Commit to daily training, even if for a short time, as an exercise in mental discipline. Something like the 30 / 30 Challenge is a great start. The idea is to do 30 minutes of any exercise every day for 30 days, that's it! So take a walk tonight, do some katas and hit the bag tomorrow, do up calisthenics the next night, whatever it is you like to do. I did this for a full year in 2023 and only got 4 months perfect score but the others were darn close and still waaaay more than I would have done otherwise. Plus once you get used to doing 30 minutes consistently it's easy to bump it up to an hour or more if you have time.

All the very best,

Pete Kautz

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