Workout Buddies

If regular exercise is part of your weight loss strategy, getting a workout buddy is something you should seriously consider.

This article discusses the benefits of having a workout buddy, what to look for in a workout buddy, where to find one, and finishes with a few final thoughts for you to think about.

Benefits of a Workout Buddy

There are many benefits of having a workout buddy. These include:

• Increased Motivation
• Faster Progression
• Increased Experimentation and Knowledge
• New and Enhanced Friendships
• More Fun

Many of us struggle to maintain our motivation for exercise and fit it into our busy lifestyles.

Often the hardest part of exercise is getting started, and the key to exercise for weight loss and fitness is regularity.

Having a workout buddy that you know is expecting to meet you for a workout is a powerful motivator because you don’t want to let your workout buddy down. The time most of us is most likely to decide not to have a scheduled workout is just beforehand. If you’re working out on your own, it’s too easy to say to yourself something like, “I don’t feel like exercising today, I think I’ll give it a miss” at the last minute. If your workout buddy is already on their way to meet you or is counting on you, you’re far less likely to do something like that.

Having a workout buddy tends to lead to faster progression, whether that progression is in improved fitness, strength, flexibility, weight loss, or all of these.  The reason for this progression is that workout buddies tend to push each other to new levels with suggestions like “let’s walk a little further today or a little faster today”. If one workout buddy is a little fitter than the other, the less fit buddy often has to work a little harder and catches up in fitness as a result.

Workout buddies often encourage each other to experiment with different forms of exercise, and as a result their collective knowledge about exercise and what works for them increases. Trying something new or something different also helps improve results because it forces our body to keep guessing and doesn’t allow it to get too used to the same type of exercise.

Exercising regularly with a workout buddy inevitably helps create new or enhances existing relationships because workout buddies spend quite a bit of time together over the journey and often talk about things other than exercise or weight loss.

One of the greatest benefits of exercising with a workout buddy is that it makes exercise fun.

What to look for in a Workout Buddy

If a workout buddy is going to work for you long term, it’s important that you and your workout buddy are compatible in a few key areas.

Ideally, you and your workout buddy will be similar in your:

• Goals
• Fitness Level
• Exercise Preference
• Exercise Commitment
• Exercise Time
• Age
• Gender

Having a workout buddy with similar goals to you can help ensure you workout happily together for a long time.

Having similar levels of fitness can also be important over the long haul. For example, if one workout buddy can jog at 10kilometres per hour (kph) and the other can only manage 7kph, neither person is going to be happy in the long run if the person jogging at 7khp can’t improve their speed and get somewhere closer to 10kph and beyond.

It’s also important that workout buddies enjoy the same type of exercise. If one buddy likes walking and the other bike riding, someone’s not going to be happy unless each buddy is willing to do both forms of exercise regularly.

For workout buddies to be compatible, it’s important that they are equally committed to exercise.

One of the most important compatibility factors is often that workout buddies can exercise regularly at the same time of the day and for the same periods of time. For example, if I can only workout before work and you can only exercise after work, we’re not going to make good workout buddies.

Likewise, if I have the time to walk for an hour and you only have time to walk for 30 minutes; neither of us is likely to be happy.

It’s not critically important that you and your workout buddy are the same age and gender, but these factors are still worth considering.

Where to find a Workout Buddy

If you want to find a workout buddy, there are plenty of places to find one. The most obvious of these are:

• Fitness Centres
• Home
• Community

The most likely place to find a good workout buddy is at a local fitness centre. People attending the local gym or going to local yoga or Pilates classes, are clearly interested in exercise and either live or work locally. If you workout at these places too, it won’t be long before you start to develop relationships with others that can eventually turn into workout buddy relationships.

Sometimes your workout buddy is right under your nose. Partners, family, friends and even pets can make great workout buddies. My current workout buddy is our family rabbit who loves to spend time in my home gym with me when everyone else in the house has gone to bed. He spends time bouncing around the room, showing off, and comes up to me for a pat in between sets while I work out.

You can also find workout buddies in your local and online communities. Walking in your local park at regular times may result in meeting someone who walks in the same place around the same time each day. Online communities, like the weight loss forum on this site can also be great places to find workout buddies. The weight loss forum has a Walking groups section for example where people register their interest in finding someone to exercise with in their local area.

Final thoughts

Many people prefer to exercise at a gym, primarily because of the access it gives them to equipment, but also because of the motivation they get from working out with lots of other people around exercising too.

An exercise buddy can be a great help in ensuring we exercise on a regular basis and in doing so helps us achieve our fitness and weight loss goals, no matter whether we’re exercising at home, in the park, or in the local gym.

In many ways, Personal Trainers are simply a paid workout buddy that also helps us plan our workouts and ensure we’re employing the correct exercise techniques.

If you can’t find a workout buddy and you need extra motivation, hiring a personal trainer is something you may also wish to consider.

Conclusion

If regular exercise is part of your weight loss strategy, getting a workout buddy is something you should seriously consider.

This article discussed the benefits of having a workout buddy, what to look for in a workout buddy, where to find one, and finishes with a few final thoughts for you to think about.

We hope you found it useful and we wish you every success in achieving your fitness and weight loss goals.

Good luck with your weight loss and thanks for visiting weightloss.com.au.

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