The pause button problem

Most people who want to exercise at home are not short of workouts. There are thousands of good ones online, free, ready whenever you like.

That last part is the problem.

"Whenever you like" usually means "later"

A workout you can start at any time has no particular reason to start now. There's always a better moment: after this email, once dinner's settled, tomorrow morning when you're fresh. Each of those decisions is small and reasonable. Added up, they're why the yoga mat lives behind the door.

The video makes it worse. Every pause is another decision. A thirty-second rest can stretch to the length of a phone notification, and nothing ends unless you end it.

What actually gets people moving

Psychologists have a name for the fix: an implementation intention. It's a plan that says exactly when and where you'll do something. Not "I'll work out more", but "at 6:30 on Tuesday, I'll do a class in the living room".

It sounds almost too simple, but it's one of the better-tested ideas in behaviour research. A well-known 2006 review by Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran pooled 94 studies, with more than 8,000 people between them. It found that making plans like this had a medium-to-large effect on whether people followed through.

The reason, broadly, is that the decision gets made once, in advance. When 6:30 on Tuesday arrives, you're not deciding whether to work out. You're just doing the thing you already decided.

A class is a plan that holds you to it

Booking a class at a fixed time is an implementation intention with teeth:

• The when and where are decided. You picked the slot, and it's in your calendar.
• It starts without you. At 6:30 it begins whether you're there or not.
• It ends on its own. Thirty minutes later it's over. Nothing drags on, and there's no stopping early.
• Nobody can pause it. The rests are as long as the coach set them, not as long as your scroll.
• Other people are doing it too. Everyone booked into your session is at the same moment of the same class.

That is the whole idea behind 30 Flat. We didn't need a new kind of workout. We took the one thing that gets people to a studio, a start time, and put it on the workouts you do at home.

Making your start time stick

A few things help, however you train:

1. Pick a time that's already structured. Before work, at lunch, straight after you get home. A slot attached to an existing routine is easier to keep than one floating in free time.
2. Put it in your calendar, with an alert ten minutes before.
3. Set up the night before. Mat down, water out, kit on the chair. Make starting the easiest thing in the room.
4. Plan for the obvious obstacle. "If I get home late, I'll take the 8:30 class instead." If-then plans for a likely problem work the same way.
5. Keep the bar low on bad days. A gentle class done beats a hard one skipped. On a flat day, book Stretch 30 instead of nothing.

The hardest part of a home workout was never the workout. It's starting. So decide when you'll start, and let the clock do the rest.

Source: Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 69–119.