What 194 Workouts in a Row Taught Me About Exercise
When I started my exercise streak, I wasn’t thinking about hitting 194 days (and still counting as I write this...) I just wanted to move a little more consistently and designate a time of day for me. I thought I would read on some days, exercise on others, maybe pick up a new hobby in the middle. Well, it turns out I really fell in love with training again and every day just brought another workout. Along the way, I learned a few things that most people don’t talk about when it comes to long-term training. Here are the three biggest lessons:
Under-recovery happens before overtraining. Most people worry about “overtraining,” but the truth is that the problem usually starts earlier—with under-recovery. Doing something every single day forced me to respect sleep, hydration, mobility work, and nutrition way more than before. It’s not that the workouts got easier—it’s that I got smarter about balancing them with actual recovery. If you don’t respect recovery, you’ll feel run down long before you’ve truly “overtrained.”
Not every day is a home run. I’ll be honest: some days my “workout” was basically a C+ Yoga class. And that’s okay. Not every session needs to be PR-worthy or Instagram highlight reel material. Chasing perfection is what burns people out. Progress isn’t built on crushing it every single day—it’s built on stacking enough singles and doubles over time. Showing up is what matters most, even if the effort is less than heroic.
Making time is the ultimate fitness ‘hack’. The most common excuse I hear is, “I don’t have time" followed by "I'll get it done if I find time"...But here’s the hard truth: time doesn’t just appear—you have to make it. Most days I train in the early morning, if that option doesn't happen then the other days are later at night, when the kiddos go to bed. Sometimes I squeezed it into a 20-minute window between work tasks. If something matters, you carve out space for it. Making time is the ultimate hack, because without it, none of the other strategies matter.
Final Thought- Exercising 194 days in a row didn’t happen because I was superhuman—it happened because I respected recovery, let go of perfection, and made time no matter what. If you take even one of these lessons and apply it, you’ll be surprised at how much easier consistency feels.
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