Why You Skipped Your Workout: This isn’t a book about exercise, it’s about everything that makes exercise possible.
No ‘just do it’. No shortcuts. No sticking plasters. Just evidence-based practices to get you moving and keep you moving.
Why You Skipped Your Workout is the chronic-workout-skipper’s guide to exercising in a way your body and mind will love. It’s not about exercise, it’s about everything that makes exercise possible.
Your relationship with exercise (and ultimately, your body) impacts your long-term health and wellbeing. Far from a moral failing, this is a systemic and widespread issue that too many of us face alone.
Why You Skipped Your Workout breaks down the barriers between you and a happy relationship with moving your body in 6 key stages:
Exploring your expectations around exercise, movement, and your body.
Assessing how you think about movement and how your thoughts influence your results.
Ensuring you work with your emotions and cultivate feel good vibes at every step.
Understand how we take action and how to make it even easier to take the action that gets you to your goals.
Revisiting your purpose so you know exactly why exercise has a place in your life.
Creating movement habits that are sustainable so you can continue to adapt and evolve throughout your life!
This book is your map to exercising for your body and mind.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I picked up this book because I am terrible at consistency in all things, and I’m so glad I did. There are many, many things I loved about this book. Here’s my shortlist:
The author manages to speak to the reader as an equal, which I find a very rare thing in self-help type books. She draws on her own experiences (good and bad) to make her points which in turn makes the whole book very relatable with a friendly tone.
References!! The facts in this book are backed up with evidence, and pointers on where to go for more information. As someone with a science background I very much appreciate this.
Many aspects of this book are transferable to other areas of life that are not remotely to do with workouts. It’s made me think differently about how I motivate myself to do anything (badly, is the answer).
The book contains some explanations of why people skip workouts that are so spot on that I feel like the author may be a mindreader and wrote this book specifically for me. She also put in words some notions/feelings that I didn’t realize were a ‘thing’ (the difficult-easy vs difficult-difficult explanation blew my mind. I feel this constantly but have never been able to articulate it!).
The activities; I’m going to be honest, I did not set out to do them. When I read, I like to be immersed. If you tell me to go and do/think about something else, I will not be back for 2-3 business days. However, just reading through them was an interesting exercise in itself. By the end, I was mentally completing some without really considering it; everything just flowed so well
In summary, this book is well-researched, non-judgemental, and incredibly useful. It does what it says on the tin, and then some.
Robyn, Verified purchase.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
It happens all the time. It's the reason I feel like a failure with exercise and never actually stick to anything.
This book is unique. It's not telling me how to exercise it is helping me understand why I struggle so much.
I actually have hope now that a fit and active ME is possible
Anon, Verified purchase.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This book provided a multitude of options to help people see why they make certain decisions and then how to reframe to make different decisions. It's geared at workouts and movement but is applicable to any decision making challenge. While targeted at women and sharing specifics on the biological and social issues that cis and trans women face, this book has plenty of applicable information for male and non binary folks as well. It is a great resource for people who move and for coaches of those people.
Colleen Jolly, author of ‘Mobility for Pole’
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This book is such a good read.
In my case “workout” is a gentle walk or a bit of yoga, and I still skip it.
This book is a compassionate, thoughtful and wise look at why we make these decisions. And how we can learn to gently make different ones.
Loved it.
Kate, Verified purchase.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I loved reading this book. Even as someone who doesn’t usually lack the motivation to exercise, it has helped me be kinder to myself within my movement practice and realise when I actually need to take a break. Each section is full of actions to help identify your challenges and barriers and put in measures to overcome these.
Claire, Verified purchase.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
No matter where you are in your life, you will find this book useful. If you workout 3x a week and would like to know why you skipped one workout? Useful. If you don't work out but you'd like to start? Useful. Motivation from the 'new year new you' falling away now we're at the end of January? Very useful.
As someone who had fallen out of love with exercise over years of overdoing and underdoing it in turn, I loved having the opportunity to read this book. It is a well written and relatable account of skipping workouts and working out why.
Since completing the book I have started swimming regularly for the first time (a workout I've found out I actually enjoy), and I look forward to continuing to utilise the techniques I've learned from this book to develop my movement practice. I cannot recommend this book enough.
Fran, Verified purchase.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Seonaidh does an amazing job of shining a light on the many areas where our fitness routines breakdown. And her easy-to-implement strategies to address those challenges will not only help you get back on track, but they’ll help you stay on track. If improving your fitness is something you care about, but taking the steps needed to make it happen has been difficult, buy this book!
Brendan Mahan, ADHD Coach, Consultant and Speaker