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Barriers to Exercise

  • Method Health
  • Feb 24
  • 14 min read

Updated: Mar 10



Barriers to being physically active and meeting international physical activity guidelines. 

Tom’s takeaway:

No time, Perceived cost, low interest, exercise symptoms like pain/fatigue/breathlessness, no safe access, low perceived benefit, low motivation, lack of knowledge of where to start, environment temperature, feeling judged when starting or bad experience when first starting, and belief that you or your occupation are “active enough”, are all barriers to being sufficiently active. All of these barriers can be reframed to increase consistent participation in exercise. Hopefully, the following suggestions will reduce any perceived barriers you may have to exercise enough each week. 


Less than half of us globally meet recommended activity guidelines each week, and only around a third complete bi-weekly strengthening exercises. Looking across all those populations, it turns out there are many consistent barriers to regular exercise.


Here are our top tips to help you exercise more while reframing common barriers to exercise. You can use the same types of mental reframing to increase participation in other health choices like brushing your teeth, eating more vegetables, or starting another fun hobby. As you read and decide whether each suggestion is valid for your context, it is normal to think of another reason why that tip won't work. Write that reason down and keep reading. If your concern is not covered anywhere in this article or is covered but you want more detail, send us an email, and an appointment with us can help find those details within your life to help you find a way to exercise more. For example, a barrier to exercise might be cost, so we might encourage walking or a walk: jog program and a home strength exercise program which are free to complete. So, you might think, “But I don’t know how much to do”. That is another point addressed in this article & it also raises the issue of the unrealistic “all at once” “boom and bust” exercise programs, like a large weekend gardening or painting spree, that finishes the weekend with a sore shoulder or back versus the far easier “just start small” and progress gradually over time. More specifics are covered later. 


  • For children and young people (5 to 17 years), “We recommend children and young people do at least 60 minutes each day of moderate to vigorous physical activity that makes the heart beat faster. More is better.” “At least 3 days per week, children and young people should incorporate vigorous activities and activities that strengthen muscle and bone in the 60 minutes.”

  • For adults (18 to 64 years), “Accumulate 150 to 300 minutes (2 ½ to 5 hours) of moderate-intensity physical activity or 75 to 150 minutes (1 ¼ to 2 ½ hours) of vigorous-intensity physical activity, or an equivalent combination of both moderate and vigorous activities, each week. Do muscle-strengthening activities at least 2 days each week.”

  • For older Australians (65 years and over), “For people aged 65 years and over, we recommend at least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity on most, preferably all, days. If you find 30 minutes difficult right now, start with just 10 minutes once or twice a day. After 2 weeks, increase to 15 minutes twice a day.” “Do muscle strengthening activities on at least 2 days each week”

  • For people with disability or chronic conditions, “If you can, try to meet the physical activity recommendations for your age group. Any activity is better than none, and it’s important to do activities that are appropriate to your ability.”


If you are a Method Health member, then you might already be meeting the Australian PA guidelines and not be concerned. However, you likely have family or friends that are not sufficiently active. A large cohort of people that would benefit from this blog the most are probably not choosing to seek this type of information. If you like these tips, please send the blog around and spread the message that everyone can be sufficiently active by just reframing how we think about our common barriers. If they are open to chatting about their barriers to exercise, start the chat and support them with the best health medicine you can, which is exercise. The list of advice below for each barrier is by no means expansive. Still, it should allow the discussion to start and start with your advice tailored to each person's lifestyle and barriers to being sufficiently physically active.


Barrier 1: TIME

People might see 150 minutes per week as a massive commitment, saying I can’t achieve that, so it's not worth trying. However, every second of exercise has benefits & it’s not necessary to be all at once or just in 30 to 60-minute chunks. 


Short-term advice

Do you have 5 seconds a couple of times a day to exercise? Yes. Try some vigorous exercises called “exercise snacks.” This is a great way to ease yourself into the habit of exercise. You do not need to exercise for more than 10 minutes for it to be beneficial. In other words, lower your expectation of what is a “sufficient exercise session”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5heEnNqQBVU


An example of an aerobic exercise snack: 5 seconds or more of high knees, skipping, jogging, running on the spot or against a wall. Everyone has time for that throughout the day. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5heEnNqQBVU            


For strengthening exercise, a single set of 8 to 12 repetitions for the legs, chest, back, and shoulder muscle groups twice weekly is a sufficient minimal dose, particularly for those who are previously untrained. Again, if you have 10 seconds, you can do 1 set of 10 repetitions of any strength exercise. See this paper for more about minimal effective doses of strength training. Although progressive overload is important to target long-term, there are benefits to doing the bare minimum in frequency, load, time, type, and volume. 


Some strength-based exercise snacks- complete each or one exercise for as many as you can, starting for 10 seconds.

  • Double or single-leg squats on each leg.

  • Lunges.

  • Push-ups on the floor or the easier option against a wall or steady bench/table.

  • If you watch TV, then you have time to exercise during an ad or between episodes. If you don’t want to do this, then time is not a barrier to exercise. 

  • Don’t have time to go to a gym or exercise outside your home? The access/safety section below lists house-based exercise advice. 

Don’t worry too much if you can't exercise much during the week, and plan to exercise a lot on the weekends. Weekend warriors who do most of their exercise on the weekend are still better off than those who don’t exercise at all. 


Long-term advice:

Exercise is an investment in your health. It's important to make time for exercise before it is prescribed to you by a doctor or physiotherapist. If you don’t make time for exercise, sickness and early death will control your time. 


Aim to increase the time spent being active gradually. Do you brush your teeth at night? Ten seconds of brushing is better than not brushing at all, but 2 minutes are better & by developing the habit, we build in more time for brushing on most occasions.  


So, start with 5 seconds of exercise. If you feel like you can’t do that, it's unlikely time is actually your barrier, but another belief that’s stopping you - read on. 


Starting the habit of starting exercise (getting to the gym or prioritising and starting at home) is the hard part. Adding time is easy when the habit of starting has occurred without needing “motivation,” but more on that later.     


Barrier 2: COST


Walking or running and home strength-based exercise are free. Plan and progress each week. You do not need a gym membership to exercise.


  • YouTube is a free resource with millions of exercise videos. 

  • There are many free exercise apps. Just type free exercise into your device app store and trial some of the many options.

  • See the knowledge section below for a list of people to follow for free who provide high-quality exercise advice. 

  • If you subscribe to an entertainment service such as Netflix, Stan, Binge, Youtube Premium, Foxtel, etc., then you have money for a gym membership or exercise app  https://www.finder.com.au/gyms 

  • Look up free community-based exercise opportunities in your area.

Barrier 3: INTEREST


If you don’t enjoy exercise, reflect on the reasons why and what you could do to influence that: 


When you think of exercise, do you think of Olympians or huge bodybuilders? If your expectations are not based on your interests, the incentive to begin is unlikely. There is a wide range of what counts as exercise or being physically active. 


Do you feel it needs to be hard to be worth it and you are not interested in hard exercise? Exercise does not need to be hard to be beneficial but can promise more efficient health gains for the time you put in. Make exercise easier for yourself by starting small. It will get easier over time, and you can increase dosage as your tolerance improves. 


It’s boring- Is it the location?(try another location), time?(try completing less time), modality? (don’t like running or gym, then try a social sport, YouTube-led strength workout, bushwalking, get a dog). Brushing your teeth or watching ads on TV is pretty boring.


Barrier 4: PAIN/INJURY/FEAR OF INJURY

Fear of injury in sports and exercise is common among participants and coaches. To counteract that, I can’t just tell someone that exercise is safe; they need to experience it themselves. Seek positive coaching or well-informed internet or face-to-face guidance for a safe starting approach. 


Are you concerned about moving wrong or exercising with the “wrong” technique? Actually, the evidence shows that exercise-induced injury is commonly predicted by too much dosage with inadequate recovery rather than movement quality or incorrect technique. So, start small and progress gradually to the larger doses as your body adapts to your training regime.


Maybe the people you have followed on social media have instigated fear of exercise in you and might be worth an “unfollow.” How to spot a fear-mongering health professional or red flags to look out for are:

  • Anyone with a large emphasis on technique or form, 

  • Needing to “move right,” 

  • Highlighting “movement faults,” 


Best and worst exercises.” Always talks about “bad movements or exercises.” “This exercise is bad for …..” (insert a body part). Although well-intended, these messages have only very small specific contexts when correct, and out of context, they falsely spread notions of body fragility that quickly become barriers to exercise. 

  • https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/why-are-physicians-afraid-of-iron 

  • Existing pain is commonly a massive barrier to exercise. However, exercise with pain is normally very safe, especially for pain that has persisted for more than three weeks. Even in a hospital setting, as some of you will know, surgery patients are encouraged by the physiotherapist to get up and start walking to help ease post-operative pain. 

  • Fear of pain and issues around “pain equals damage” are separate barriers for many people. The topic of pain is complex, but certainly, the protective approaches you learned from childhood, along with pervasive myths such as that “musculoskeletal pain always requires surgery to fix,” are barriers that we are here to help you overcome. 


Here are some more sites to help support your goal of exercising with pain. 


Barrier 5: FATIGUE & BREATHLINESS

  • Similar advice to exercise with pain. Find a tolerable starting point, as little as 5 seconds, and progress what you do each week to month as your fatigue and breathlessness improve. 

  • Seek assistance from an exercise coach trained well in the medical field like we have at Method Health, and just like for managing pain, we can help guide you in exercising with fatigue or breathlessness. 

Barrier 6: ACCESS AND SAFETY

Barrier 7: LACK OF PERCEIVED BENEFIT/ AGE/ MEDICAL CONDITION

Barrier 8: SOCIAL SUPPORT

  • Ask your partner, siblings, or kids to support your exercise habits. This can be by joining you or prompting you to meet your daily habit goals. 

  • Maybe if you are thinking of supporting someone else to be more active, if you cook for them, encourage them to have a good night's sleep or brush their teeth, then you also can assist in supporting them with exercise habits. 

    Barrier 9: LOW MOTIVATION

  • Motivation tends to follow action or behaviour. Doing something regularly and getting good at something builds motivation to continue. 

  • Needing motivation to start a new habit is not sustainable long term. Reframe this to “my expectations are too much for my current motivation.” If you lower your expectations to complete a bit less of some exercise to a point that is easier to start with (the action), motivation increases throughout the exercise bout, and you might end up doing more anyway. Once you get the habit, without needing motivation, it will become hard to break. 

  • Pair exercise with a task that already requires minimal motivation, like brushing your teeth at home, driving past a park or gym on the way home from work, or taking the stairs rather than the elevator whenever the choice occurs.

  • “I used to be able to but lost the habit.” I hear this when life has changed, interests have changed, or another barrier has arisen. Barriers to exercise habits are normal throughout life. If it was a habit before, your potential for building another habit is still there. Identify the barrer for starting this previous habit or a new active habit using this article. Then, a fun activity or mode of exercise that requires minimal motivation to start and complete; over time, will become a habit again. One slip-up or heaps does not mean failure forever.

    Barrier 10: KNOWLEDGE

  • If you can move, you can exercise. 

  • Well-intended coaches can overcomplicate exercise. Standing up from a chair ten times, picking something heavy off the floor, and going up the stairs multiple times can be considered exercise initially. No university degrees are needed to encourage that if you don’t know where to start.  

  • If you want more information than that, here are some more resources outside of our Method Health website and social media to give you some ideas to get you started

    • YouTube is a free resource. Search “beginner short exercise at home or gym,” and hundreds of videos will pop up that can increase your knowledge of exercise. 

    • Seek coaching from an exercise professional, like any of the coaches at Method Health. 

    •  Here are just a few free places to start learning high-quality exercise information from resources.

Exercise related:

Physiotherapy and Medical


Barrier 11: WEATHER

  • Exercise indoors or pick a gym that maintains a good internal temperature.

  • Too hot?

    • Expect exercise to improve your heat tolerance. As your fitness improves, so do your internal cooling mechanisms. So, the more you exercise, the more your body will tolerate the heat, so not exercising because it is too hot might make it harder in the future to exercise or tolerate the heat, even in a non-exercise context.

    • Exercise at cooler times of the day or indoors in the air conditioning, especially if you might have been told by a doctor to avoid the heat. 

    • If time in the heat is a barrier, start with smaller dosages (again, 5 seconds is fine) during the hot parts of the day. 

    • Don’t worry about hydration unless you plan to exercise for longer than an hour. Your body does not need to be hydrated during exercise if you exercise for less than an hour and you plan to drink after stopping exercise.

    • Try consuming cold or iced fluid before and during exercise to reduce internal body temperature. Pre-cooling- ice or cold water ingested before exercise improves hot environment tolerance. 

    • Wear a wet hat, scarf, or shirt to assist body cooling. 

    • Hot exercise sound bad for you? Recent media focus on heat stress and heat-related deaths has probably assisted that concern. Exercise is safe in hot temperatures, but generally, humans do better if we are acclimatised. Our body is very good at regulating temperature regardless of perceived heat tolerance or age. Just start with the dosage you feel tolerable and progress over time as you acclimate.

    • I’m not saying you should seek hot environments to exercise in like at hot yoga, saunas or when it's baking and 99% humidity outside, but we know environments are safe or can be modified or prepared for to be made safer to exercise in. Modify your activities to maintain your goals and to meet weekly PA guidelines throughout the summer. 

  • Too cold?

    • Put on more layers of clothing, and after 5-10 minutes of exercise, you’ll heat up.

    • Try consuming a warm pre-workout beverage like coffee, tea, or hot chocolate to warm up. 

  • Smoky or polluted outside?

    • We will all have to learn to adapt to this if climate change continues not to be acted upon individually and globally in substantial ways. 

    • Exercise indoors. See the home-based exercise from the information in this article.

Barrier 12: FEELING LIKE YOU MIGHT BE JUDGED


  • Many people initially feel this way, and many stay that way. What changes are acceptance and tolerance to the public eye, which improve with exposure and improved self-efficacy and confidence after exercising in a public space. Realise that most people “judging” you are also watching for you “judging” them. 

  • Maybe you have had a bad experience at a gym or public exercise space. Try another space, and don’t let that experience stop you from reaching your full health potential. 

  • If you don’t want to be judged at all, exercise in your home or another private setting. 

Barrier 13: "I'M ALREADY ACTIVE ENOUGH"

  • If you meet the Australian activities guidelines, including the strength training recommendations of 60 min per week, then I congratulate you. Hopefully, the information above will help support your consistency for the rest of your life.

  • Most of the time, the more you do, the better the health outcomes. Once you spend 30 minutes a day, the added benefit, while still increasing with more time exercising, is smaller as a whole, and the outcomes occur less noticeably over time. However, making slower gains due to already being highly active is an excellent problem.  

  • If you mean your exercise is what you do at work or in maintaining home and family, know that exercise for leisure or health goals has uniquely positive effects compared to being physically active at work, where choice, enjoyment, and intensity are less controllable. There is heaps of research to encourage leisure-based activity even for those who have high work demands https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34284795/ - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25805756/ - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36966711/ - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38099982/ It’s like comparing a whole fruit to a vitamin supplement. Yes, supplements enable hitting vitamin intake goals, but they don’t offer the fibre or many other micronutrients only found in fruit. Find a fun, active hobby outside of work for leisure-based exercise and to assist with work preparedness and coping. 

Also, being fitter improves tolerance for your physical work, making it easier and even possibly more enjoyable. It can also reduce work leave due to injury or illness. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38129646/  You’ll earn more because you'll be at work more and enjoy the tough parts of work more. 








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