Scott Young has a good post here about making workouts daily. Now that I’ve been working out daily for about a month, I can attest to this strategy. The one thing I would change is his suggestion to start out at 20-30 min. per day. I would lower this significantly, to whatever a person thinks is easy but useful.

1. I started much less than 20-30 min. (literally just driving to the gym, not getting out of the car, and then driving on to errands and so on). I did this on the logic that getting to the gym was the hardest part (once you’re there, the rest is relatively easy).

2. When I started working out (after about 5 days of just driving to the gym), I started at 5 min. per day. Then I increased that by small amounts, on about 5 day intervals. It’s only now, after about a month, that I’m at the 20 min. mark. This gave me a sense of momentum.

3. By starting small, it helped me to focus on which exercises were the most important, and how to alternate between exercises so I wasn’t ‘waiting’ in between sets. That way, as I increase time, I have naturally prioritized my workouts.

The other thing I would emphasize is: figure out how to make it (net) enjoyable. If it isn’t, you probably won’t stick to it. This is another advantage to starting out small, because it’s usually easier to figure out how to make 5 min. enjoyable than 45 min. Once you figure out 5 min., you can figure out how to make 2 more min., and so on.

Have fun!