Exercise is one of those things that we all need to do. It is a matter of ensuring that we have some form of long-term health. Research consistently shows much better long-term quality of life for people who engage in regular exercise. This includes both mental and physical benefits. None of this prevents exercise from being a difficult task though. No one like sweating or exerting themselves that much in the moment. After all, you are putting a direct strain on the body when exercising. That’s how you know you’re actually benefiting your body in the first place! The difficulty of maintaining the motivation in the face of long-term results can be problematic and lead a lot of us to abandon our exercise goals. Fortunately, this can be worked against by finding a workout partner or partners. All of you together will be able to gain more benefits than you will on your own. This merits taking a quick look at some of the major benefits you’ll get from working out with others.

Motivation
Humans are naturally social creatures and it shows in a lot of ways. We tend to derive more satisfaction and motivation from engaging in activities with others. This does include introverts as well. Even the most introverted of us have the friends we like to be around and enjoy activities with even if there is a distinct need to recharge afterward. Exercise can work in the exact same way. Working out with others generates a mutual expectation that you will both be present for the exercising and intend to stick with the habit for as long as you can. This goes a long way towards helping keep the motivation going. After all, it is one thing if you decide, when exercising on your own, that you’ll take a short break that becomes a long one and another thing entirely if the same thing comes up when exercising with others. Exercise partners keep us honest and motivated to keep going even if we might otherwise quit.

Effort
Many of us end up slacking off some while exercising even if we keep up the hobby. This can take many forms ranging from our run not lasting as long as we swore it would to dropping a portion of our exercise simply because we don’t feel up to it in the moment. These are common pitfalls that can slowly add up to the loss of motivation that we discussed above, but it can also just result in slow loss of gains over the course of time from not maintaining a particular level of effort. Exercising with partners also helps to counteract this problem. You and any partners will each be putting in the effort you can manage and slowly increasing in what you can tolerate. This allows you each to push one another forward when effort begins to slip as you’ll be there to encourage one another to keep going. Reinforcing the effort involved in exercise will help keep it consistently healthy for all involved.

Support
An often overlooked part of having partners for exercise is that you’ll be regularly communicating with and supporting other people. If they aren’t already close to you, you’ll likely learn about the people you’re exercising with and gradually form a bond. This potential friendship, in turn, allows you to regularly talk to people you know and are known by to share parts of your life with over time. It provides emotional support that helps one deal with the rigors of life at the same time that the clear and present support helps keep one motivated to exercise. This benefits everyone involved on several by helping everyone to satisfy the physical need for exercise as well as the emotional needs of being human. You may find the exercising with people regularly helps to build bonds that will last for a long time after your workouts together. There are worse things than exercise restoring one in both body and mind.

Exercising with others has plenty of benefits. It helps keep us all honest and sticking to our exercises as well. Maintaining a workout routine is hard to do on our own and getting some help goes a long way towards ensuring we’ll remain healthy as possible over time. The potential benefits of having friends you regularly work out with will also help maintain mental health too. This is something to keep in mind the next time you start considering starting to exercise again and dreading the long grind most of us seem to think we need to do alone.