While some people in a relationship enjoy working out with their friends or feel that it should be a solitary activity, plenty of others want to exercise with their significant other.
For happy couples who aren’t yet convinced of the reasons for doing so, here are seven of them that makes perfect sense.
Take It in Turns to Reach New Heights
When using fitness equipment with the goal of losing weight, it helps to continually push for better times and tougher workouts. Equipment like a rowing machine can help you to trim down fast.
Using a rowing machine and taking it in turns can give each of you the incentive to accelerate away. If you own a pair of machines, then a little competition might be in order too.
You Don’t Get to Quit!
Let’s face it. Exercising alone is a lonely activity. Doing it together can be fun.
Sticking to the rule of performing daily exercise (unless you’re sick or it’s your rest day) is hard to do alone. But together, your accountability partner won’t accept your weak excuses. Being too tired or even lazy won’t be accepted by them, just like it wouldn’t be by you if the roles were reversed.
So, you don’t get to quit for the day and say, “I’ll do it tomorrow.”
Provide Emotional Support and Encouragement
When one or both of you aren’t huge fans of exercise, then having a loved one along is beneficial. Your partner can provide emotional support to encourage you to keep going when you’re tiring out and give you the incentive to push harder.
If you’re lacking in confidence, then their positivity can be the thing that drives you to avoid looking bad in front of them. When doing this often enough, confidence will build through an “I can do this” mentality.
Extra Quality Time
With a home life where you don’t get as much quality time with your SO as you’d like, taking time out to exercise means more time apart.
To combat the lost time when exercising separately, joining forces lets you spend it in each other’s company. This can create a greater bonding because exercising allows you to both show a vulnerable side.
Learning New Things Together
Many new things are learned at work or alone. As a result, couples don’t often discover new things together. Also, sometimes when one of you knows how to perform an exercise but the partner does not, that can be a fun teachable moment.
Learning together and challenging each of you can become a refreshingly new experience as a couple. Sometimes, it can create an interesting new dynamic too.
Feel Happier at the Same Time
Exercising releases endorphins, which promote happiness and general good feelings. When exercising alone, it’s possible to return after a workout and be in a different headspace than your partner.
However, when exercising with your SO, both of you enjoy the release of happiness chemicals. This can create positive feelings that are shared and help to overcome recent disagreements or grudges.
Find Each Other More Attractive
There’s no getting away from it, being slimmer and looking fitter is more attractive. While people love to embrace “body positive” ideals, they’re neither healthy nor realistic long-term.
All other things being equal, your partner is likely to find a slimmer version of you more physically attractive. This can encourage closeness and more intimacy than in recent times.
When working out together, you can focus on shared goals in fitness and in other places. It’s also often more enjoyable than exercising at home alone or jogging around the park on your lonesome.