If you ask a kid to do anything, odds are they’ll have a desperate excuse to not comply.

Dad: Did you clean your room?
Kid: I need help!

Mom: Did you brush your teeth?
Kid: I’m too tired.

Dad: Please put your bike in the garage.
Kid: It’s too far.

You get the idea.

Thing is, when it comes to getting our butts in gear to workout, we can get ridiculous with our excuses.

After some scientific polling (aka asking my Facebook friends), here are some of the most popular:

1. I worked out yesterday
2. I’ll go tomorrow
3. I’m still sore
4. I’m too tired (my personal favorite)
5. Today is a “rest” day
6. I don’t have time
7. It’s too early
8. It’s too late
9. I forgot to set my alarm
10. My back/head/neck/legs hurt
11. My contacts are blurry
12. My socks smell
13. I don’t know what to do
14. I don’t like working out at the gym
15. I don’t like working out at home
16. My garage workout space isn’t finished
17. I don’t like sweating
18. The gym is too crowded
19. The gym is too empty
20. Everyone else at the gym is stronger
21. It takes too long to see results
22. I get bored
23. I’m lazy
24. I’m tired of my music
25. I don’t know what to listen to
26. I don’t have the right shoes (or I can’t find them)
27. I have to answer all these emails first or the world will end
28. I get enough exercise at my day job
29. I’m too busy chasing my kids around
30. I like ice cream instead
31. I just ate KFC, beer, pizza, bacon, hamburgers, whiskey.

Special thanks to Mike, Chauntelle, John, Joel, Sarah, Krissy, Sara, Mike, Matthew, Leanne, Rick, Geoff, Bri, Erick, Jennifer, Matt, Sean, Danny, Robby, Lorna, Christa, Katie, and Chuck for helping me with this list.

Excuses aren’t the enemy

Coming up with excuses is a skill we’ve developed since childhood. Even if we really want something (like a fit, healthy body), we barely hesitate to come up with a reason to avoid the work required to achieve it.

Did you notice anything peculiar about the list of excuses above?

Some of them referenced a mature sense of ownership and self-awareness.

Just because these are excuses doesn’t mean the reasons are invalid.

You are busy.
You are tired.
You do get sore.
You do get bored.

While the most successful people might avoid excuses (LINK) in the first place, what defines your path to success is what you do after an excuse rears it’s head.

Acknowledge the excuse, but don’t stop there. Continue the thought and consider what comes next.

Yes, you are busy. So is everyone else. What can you change about being busy? Can you add a workout to your day or do you need to swap something out? Does your “busyness” align with your values and priorities?

It’s okay to make excuses. Just don’t keep them around.

What is your favorite excuse? How do you overcome excuses in other areas of your life?

There are more great dads out there than sitcom TV would let you believe. Good men who work hard, make sacrifices, and show up every day for their families. But there are a few dudes who are asking for a kick in the shins.

Kids make everything more complicated. I get it. One kid will change your life forever. Each kid after that is just another variable in the chaos equation of fatherhood. There are four munchkins at my house giving us a run for our money.

What drives me bonkers is dads who blame their kids for their dad bod.

“I don’t want take away from time with my kids.”

Liar!

On the surface this might sound noble, but dig down an inch and it’s really a punk excuse because you’re actually shifting blame for your flabby butt to your kids.

Not to mention the self-righteous undertone implying that by making time in my schedule to workout, I am somehow stealing time from my children.

Stop using your kids as an excuse

When dads use this lame excuse what they really mean is:

“I don’t want to workout, but I feel guilty about not exercising, so I’m going to dysfunctionally shift the blame onto my kids so that when I die prematurely due to decades of neglecting my personal health, my kids can use some of the life insurance money I left them to pay for therapy where they can ask a psychiatrist why their fat dad died so young and what, if anything, they could’ve done differently”.

Nice job. What a tool.

When you exercise, you’re not sacrificing time with your kids. You are making an incremental investment where you will statistically live longer to see your kids graduate, get married, build a family of their own, and be a cool grandpa who plays on the floor with his grandkids instead of a fat or frail crusty dude they visit on holidays and can’t stand.

A real man won’t blame his kids for his dad bod

Stop robbing your children

Besides blaming your kids for your clogged arteries, not investing in your fitness robs your children in other ways:

1. Years with you. If you don’t take care of yourself physically, you physically won’t be there a lot sooner than you planned. Regular exercise extends your life by 4 years. Your kids deserve to have you around beyond their 20s.
2. Years without you. When you do kick the bucket someday, I hope that you want your children to live for many years beyond you. By setting a bad example for health and activity, your kids are more likely to follow suit and not live as long.
3. Fun. If you get easily winded or injured playing with your kids, you’re stealing countless hours of quality and quantity play time. Think about when you stopped picking up your kids because they got too heavy. Or when your kids got bigger, faster, and stronger than you. How old were they?

Redefine the dad bod with your kids

Juggling work, kids, chores, sleep, meals, school, and every other aspect of parenting is hard. That’s why you are the adult. You can handle it.

You don’t have to choose between your family and your fitness.

If you really are “so busy” that you can’t make it to the gym a couple times a week, or even if you can, involve your kids in your fitness pursuits.

Go outside. Take them to the park. Go on a hike. Do body-weight exercises and stretches together.

Kids are statistically getting fatter. Do you know who’s fault that is?

That’s right. Parents.

Not video games. Not TV. Not smartphones.

You and me.

Your kids eat what you eat and they do what you do. If you don’t have an active lifestyle and eat right, they won’t either.

If you don’t make fitness a priority and take care of your personal health, you can’t be surprised when your kids don’t.

So take care of yourself. Do it for the kids.

What is your favorite activity to do with your kids? What does being a “fit dad” look like to you?

Someone wicked smart once said,

Change is the only constant.

Why are we surprised then, when our workout routine hits a rut?

In their book Decisive, bestselling authors Chip and Dan Heath explain an interesting human phenomenon when it comes to change.

1. We gravitate toward the familiar
2. We are averse to the unknown

To dig a little deeper, we have a natural tendency to hold onto what we know. The same friends, the same restaurants, the same music, and so on.

Conversely, we are inclined to resist the unfamiliar. Especially when faced with the choice between say, our favorite restaurant or some new joint we’ve never heard of.

Naturally, we all have varying degrees of risk tolerance, but even if you’re adrenaline junky, that is your personal status quo. White knuckle shenanigans are familiar and comfortable. The idea of visiting a Barnes & Noble, browsing the shelves for hours with a Starbucks latte in hand, is foreign to you and induces anxiety (though it sounds like a slice of heaven to others).

Trying to implement initial and sustainable change faces the double-edged sword of a death grip on the familiar, and a brick wall resisting the unknown.

These same principles are in play when it comes to your workout program (or lack there of).

Highway to the comfort zone

If you’ve been couch surfing for awhile and are trying to start a new fitness routine, the first day or week can be torture.

You’re fighting against your natural instinct to grab hold of the familiar (Netflix and chips) and push away the new change (hitting the gym).

Like all change, this process takes time because letting go of the familiar is a gradual shift. At the same time, you’ll likely struggle to establish a new habit until it feels common.

Fortunately, there are two simple steps you can take to make the transition smoother.

Get real to get real results

There’s no way you’re going from curling donuts to flipping monster truck tires in 30 days. You’re also not going to make it to the gym every day.

No matter what change you’re going for, take your initial goal, and cut it in half.

• If you’re trying to lose 20 lbs, make it 10 lbs.
• If you’re trying to run 5 miles, make it 2.5 miles.
• If you’re trying to workout 6 days a week, make it 3 days.
• If you want to bench press 250 lbs in 30 days, make it 125 lbs or 60 days.

You might think that it’s a lame “hack”, but here’s a funny thing that happens. When you hit that 50% goal, you’ll have the momentum to push through to 100% in even less time.

Managing your expectations this way gives you the opportunity to achieve a quick win. In turn, you’ll be motivated to keep going and to challenge yourself even more.

Confuse your muscles, not your mind

Much like you must mentally overcome the resistance to giving up nightly Netflix binges and embrace a mindset of fitness, your muscles themselves will resist the change.

Unfortunately, we all have exercises we hate for whatever reason. It hurts, it’s uncomfortable, it looks weird, or we feel weak doing it. Myself included.

When we find a routine that helps us achieve some initial results, we get comfortable. We go to the gym and our brains can disengage while our bodies go through the motions.

This is helpful when you’re busy and only have a limited window to swing by the gym or duck out to the garage to exercise.

But unless you progressively overload your muscles, you’ll soon discover that the trend line of your results begins to flatten out as the months go on.

If you really like your routine, and the idea of change makes you want to revert to chomping on Cheetos, there are some alternatives that’ll help you conquer boredom and jump start your results without throwing a wrench in your schedule.

6 exercise variables

These variables will work your primary and supporting muscles in different ways regardless of which exercise you’re doing.

WARNING: Bad form is one of the easiest ways to injure yourself.

When implementing these variables, be quick to lower the weight/resistance while trying it out at first. Be attentive to your form and listen to your body.

1. Grip placement. Adjust the distance between your hands on the bar (or handles of a machine) and rotating grip position while pulling and pressing (dumbbells, bodyweight, cable machines, etc).
2. Foot placement. Alter the space between your feet or move one foot more forward than the other while performing an exercise.
3. Speed. Do the same movement, but with more/less speed per rep. Do not compromise form.
4. Weight. Increase the weight you are moving per rep (which may impact the number of reps).
5. Volume. Increase your reps per set, or total sets to lift more in a given workout.
6. Rest. Use a timer on your phone or watch to manage the amount of rest between sets.

Finding a routine you enjoy and gets results can feel difficult. The idea of abandoning it (even for good reason) can seem insane. Fortunately, you can change things up for the better without starting from scratch.

What are your favorite exercises? Which ones do you hate?