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Five Ways To Help Motivate Your Significant Other To Workout Without Being A Jerk
Blog | January 08, 2015
Whether it’s your husband or your wife, your boyfriend or your girlfriend, it can be hard, even annoying, to watch them continually veg out in front of the television with a bag of potato chips while you sweat it out at the Zgym. Relationships require compromise and allowing each other their own habits and respective space, but poor choices regarding health and wellbeing are a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.
Build, Don’t Break – Build them up, don’t break them down. Guilt and put-downs are the two worst things one can offer a partner who doesn’t have much motivation to exercise or commit to a healthier lifestyle. Guilt and put-downs only create animosity and resentment. Instead, try to find positive methods to gently nudge your SO toward a fitness and wellbeing.
Don’t Give Ultimatums – As with guilt and put-downs, ultimatums do not motivate people to workout unless, maybe, their health is literally at stake due to illness. Don’t tell you SO that affection of any kind will be withheld unless they get off their lazy butts. This doesn’t work. At best, ultimatums may provide a short-term solution, but fitness and wellbeing are all about the long haul. As with most disagreements in a relationship, patience is a virtue. A gentle, positive nudging every so often will go a lot further than a lot of nagging.
Workout Together – Do simple activities together that get both of you working out. Try bike rides or hikes. Long walks can be a good way to start out as well. Maybe they’re not at your level of fitness yet, but gently nurturing them toward fitness and making it fun can make all the difference in getting a loved one to work out consistently.
Goal Set Together – Time your walks, runs, or hikes. Over the course of a few weeks of consistently working out together see if you can beat your previous times or go a little farther than before. Goal setting provides a great deal of motivation, especially when the goal, however small it may be, is achieved. Positive reinforcement really works and goal setting together can provide positive growth in any relationship.
Focus on Health Not Appearance – This is really important, especially if your SO is out of shape or overweight. Make sure their health is the number one priority not how they look. Focusing on looks can often make people overly self-conscious and, worse, feel incredibly insecure about themselves. It also makes them feel as though affection is contingent upon their physical appearance, not who they are as a complete person. This, of course, is completely counter-productive for a healthy, lasting relationship.
Have you experienced this with an SO? Tell me about it.
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Private Member |
seattle, washington
Good advice. I was never successful at encouraged an SO to workout. You know some of this article could also applies to family and friends. I don’t know how many people I see a day who could just workout for a couple minutes a day and be healthier.
Private Member |
myrtle beach, south carolina, united states
My boyfriend has those genes that let him get away with eating whatever he wants and only working sporadically. I seriously don’t get how he stays muscular. That said, I’ve only been able to get him to do two of these workouts with me because they intimidate him so much! Harhar.
By the way, Zuz, I love, love, LOVE the new comment feature! Great idea!
Private Member |
Haha! My guy is exactly the same! He works as a carpenter and is extremely fit but he eats whatever he wants including junk food, beer and all the rest and his body fat percentage is probably about 5% or less! It drives me crazy because I have to sweat my ass off (literally) to stay in shape. I’ve gotten him to do a couple of these workouts but it was years ago and it nearly killed him haha! That said, he does do pushup quite regularly so that seems to help his core strength for work. He does only the bare minimum for what makes him feel fit. I wish it were that easy. Lucky bum. I love working out though so no complaints!
Private Member |
fenton, missouri, united states
That’s my boyfriend exactly!!! haha! It’s so frustrating…as I’m typing this he has just finished his 3rd bowl of Lucky Charms and working on his 2nd glass of Mountain Dew..and then in an hour probably will go for 2 pb&J’s! But he still has his muscles and very lean..why just why!!! He has done 2 of your workouts with me and rewarded himself with some fast food…ugh. I also love the new comment feature. This website is awesome awesome awesome.
Private Member |
Hi Zuzka, i really like this post! I have a problem….my husband doesn’t want to workout alone, he wants to workout with me but my thing is this..I workout at 4 am he likes to workout in the evening, I do the Zgym he like P90X 3 with Tony Horton..so we compromised…I purchased your kettlebell workouts cds because I thought he would workout with them , he worked out with me for couple of weeks but we were roteting workouts, well it got to the point that I got burned out of Tony’s workouts because I was getting too tired since i was still working out with you in the morning …so that did not last, right now he’s not working out at all..so i agreed to try again. Wish me luck hope i have enough energy…I’m not giving up the Zgym. ..Ciao
Private Member |
Ugh the thought of having to do those hour long workouts that are that intense just makes me cringe. Not to mention I never have time for all of that. Have you ever thought that maybe your SO is stuck in that same mind set that a lot of people are? Where they think if they don’t do at least an hour that it’s all for nothing? I have a friend that just can’t seem to wrap her mind around high intensity workouts. She’ll run 6 miles, then she’ll do her workouts with her trainer and then throw a HIIT workout in there all in one day and can’t seem to understand why her body fat % goes up instead of down but her weight goes down. She won’t listen to me that she’s losing precious muscle mass doing all that dang cardio. Anyways maybe asking your SO why he prefers the tony method could help you guys to come to an even greater compromise. 🙂
Private Member |
Yeah Kelly I get very tired thats for sure!! He tells me I shouldn’t workout so early, I should just workout in the evening with him. I always do my workouts in the mornings, I have to be at work at 5:00am so working out with Zuzka it’s my precious and own time to face the day. I actually was like your friend, I use to be a trainer/instructor but the older I got I started slowing down and be smart about my workouts, hope she does get it too. I’m going to make an agreement with him, we are both rock climbers, did not do any climbing last year, I can have him work out with me with an agreement that I go climbing this spring 🙂 it might work, wish me luck if not he’s on his own 🙂 Ciao
Private Member |
I think that’s a fair compromise! Rock climbing sounds like a blast! Good luck I hope he agrees with you 🙂
Private Member |
My boyfriend goes to the gym regularly abd runs but completely sabotages his hard work by eating too much crap. He hates vegetables so only eats meat or pasta dishes, but never the healthy kind. A lot of pizza. My efforts at getting him to try healthier variations of his favorite foods have failed. The kicker is that he’s often frustrated that he works out so much but can’t understand why he’s not seeing better results.
Private Member |
My SO is the opposite of your ladies. Both his mothers and fathers side get big very easily and have to work very hard and practically starve themselves just to look in shape. I am the opposite, I can eat and eat and eat and maybe I will look more average size if I keep still for a few days. As soon as I move around or add in a workout or two with some paleo eating and I am back to a shredded look. In a way it is a curse because I actually work harder to keep muscle on than many do to take the weight off. I can get pretty sickly if my diet isn’t high enough in fat or protein.
Private Member |
Wow that’s crazy. Interesting how our bodies are different. My brother is the type that can eat anything and he would be slim. It took him some effort to get shredded though but its a no effort for him to have low body fat. And I… Definitely not easy to put the muscle on, and need a little effort to get that fat off…very clean diet and working out regularly. Maybe someday I will get muscle
Private Member |
venice, italy, dolcevita
My boyfriend hate me when i say to him that he should be more fit and more healty in his diet. He has done just 1 of your workout whit me.. and after 5 mimute he said “zuzka is crazy !!”ahahahah
i don’t know another way to him… i have done all of your ways !!!!
Private Member |
When we were first married I was a runner. I tried to get my husband to run with me but he hated every second of it, which would also make me miserable running with him. Over time we discovered that he loves hiking, biking, and manual labor(farming), and I love HIIT, yoga, and weights. Sometimes we work out together but usually separately. We encourage each other and give each other the time and equipment we need to stay healthy. The biggest thing for me was listening to him and helping him find what he loved instead of getting him to do what I love.
Private Member |
I agree nagging isn’t the way to go about motivating your partner to workout . My husband and I motivate eachother by seeing one another workout
Private Member |
Great article, and very relevant to me right now. I’ve been trying to help my boyfriend lose some weight. I’m in pretty good shape these days and eat clean, and he lives on beer, frozen pizzas, and boxed pasta meals (with no intention of changing these habits). He thinks that most fitness people are narcissistic but I remind him that I do it first and foremost for health reasons. The hot bod is just a bonus! I have succeeded in getting him to go on walks with me regularly which he seems to enjoy. Even better, I got him going with me once a week to a trampoline aerobics class which is a lot of fun (brings out the kid at heart). But when it comes to Zuzka’s workouts they are too intense for him so he prefers to sit back and watch me sweat it out. 😉