Whether you’ve been away on holiday and barely moved from a deckchair (besides the occasional dip in the pool), or you’ve simply lost focus with your usual training routine, it can be easy to fall off the fitness wagon in the summer months.

Long days, pub gardens, and sunny weather can all hamper your willpower to knuckle down in the weights room. Before you know it, you’re making flimsy excuses and missing out on the benefits that exercise affords, from more restorative sleep to a major reduction in the risk of serious health issues like heart attacks and strokes.

If you’re currently having a hard time swerving the sofa, the key is in knowing how to reclaim your mojo. We’ve reviewed the latest scientific literature to find some top tips for getting your fitness routine back on track. No angry PT necessary.

1. Find a workout buddy

Humans are inherently social animals, so it makes sense that roping a friend into a 7am HIIT class can make the whole process more enjoyable. The caveat? Your partner of choice needs to be a regular at the gym already.

Scientists from Kean University found that when less active people exercised alongside those who work out regularly, they felt more encouraged to stick with a gym routine in the long term. In short: find your most fitness-obsessed friend and jump on their busy class schedule.

But even if you don’t have a Pilates-loving social squad on speed dial, simply sharing your workout plans in the WhatsApp group chat can have some benefits. A study from Dominican University on goal-setting found that when people wrote down their goals and shared a progress report with a supportive friend, they were more likely to achieve their goals by the end of four weeks than those who left them unsaid.

2. Focus on 1% actions

When you’re planning to launch yourself back into a fitness routine, it can be tempting to aim high. Whether it’s running a marathon or bench pressing over 100kg, many of us fixate on achieving athletic greatness, believing it will motivate us to roll out of bed when the snooze button is calling.

While keeping yourself accountable is undeniably important, big goals can easily feel overwhelming. Research suggests that 92 percent of people who set goals fail to achieve them, with fear of failure ranking as a major saboteur.

Instead of focusing on bigger-picture achievements, habit researcher James Clear says that we should focus on tiny 1% actions instead. These are gains so minuscule that you barely notice them. Over time, though, they add up to big changes.

Rather than telling yourself you’ll run a marathon, try running for one minute longer each day. Instead of aiming to compete in a Hyrox race, focus on nailing an extra set of push-ups. Breaking your end goals down into smaller, more manageable chunks not only prevents failure and discouragement but also reduces the risk of overtraining and injury in the long run.

3. Make it easy on yourself

Whether it’s a missing locker key or an unwashed gym kit, there are plenty of minor mishaps that can stand in the way of you making it to that scheduled 7AM workout class.

Make exercising that little bit easier by allowing yourself an extra degree of flexibility. A 2020 study conducted by habit researcher Katy Milkman found that being less rigid with your workout times can actually set you up for greater success. The paper studied more than 2,500 employees at Google, monitoring one group who got paid for going to the company gym during a window of time they had identified in advance as the most manageable, and another who could opt to go anytime.

Incredibly, the researchers found that the people who’d been given greater flexibility ended up going to the gym more often, even after their reward payments ended. Meanwhile, the group on a strict schedule worked out far less on average, because when they missed their planned workout, they simply didn’t go at all.

4. Reward yourself

Struggling to get off the sofa and roll out your exercise mat? One way to increase your interest in a task is to add immediate rewards.

A recent large-scale study measuring the effectiveness of 54 different approaches to motivating people to exercise more revealed that offering a free audiobook was one of the most effective ways to get people to the gym.

Immediate rewards are incentives that give us gratification in the moment. They’re the opposite of delayed rewards, which show up at a later date. The key to building exercise motivation, according to researchers, is to ditch the big-ticket rewards and focus on in-the-moment treats (hello, post-workout flat white) that can take the edge off a less desirable task.

Short-term incentives might not seem like a big deal, but because our ancestral brains are wired to attribute rewards to their triggers, we’re more likely to repeat an action (even one we don’t enjoy, like burpees) if we slather it in dopamine.

5. Create a ritual

Some of the world’s most successful people make a consistent ritual out of healthy behaviours. The writer Haruki Murakami wakes up at 4 AM every day to write for five hours, then heads out on a run. American Vogue editor Anna Wintour rises at a similar time to get ahead on reading the day’s headlines before playing tennis.

The running theme here? Neither high achievers’ habits are dependent on a random spark of inspiration but rather follow a consistent routine. Research shows that rituals are best built on a chain of smaller, automatic habits that are so easy to action it’s impossible to say no to them. For example, your yoga routine could start by pouring yourself a glass of water. Or your post-work run could start by plugging into a motivational playlist.

Most of us know that the hardest part of any fitness routine is simply getting started, so make the first habit simple, and you’ll set yourself up for consistent success.