50 Fitness Quotes to Boost Your Exercise Routine and Keep You on Track

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You know you always feel better after working out—and this alone should vanquish any of that couch-laden inertia. But we’re human. Sometimes lacing up the running shoes or grabbing the gym bag and heading out the door with a spring in our step takes a tad of extra external encouragement.

Fitness motivational quotes can make the difference between remaining parked and getting your steps in. That’s why we’ve pulled together a list of the 50 best fitness quotes from a broad range of inspiring sources. Granted, some of them (e.g. Nietzche, Picasso, etc.) specialized in other areas, but their insights can offer a profound impact on helping us reach our physical fitness and workout goals, too. Thanks, Pablo.

Whether you’re running your first 5K or scaling a 14,000-foot peak, here are 50 of our favorite fitness- and exercise-applicable quotes that will inspire anyone to put down that donut and pick up the dumbbell.

Related: 105 Adventure Quotes to Inspire Your Next Epic Journey

Top 3 Fitness Quotes

Some of our favorite words pertaining to human fitness in the broadest sense are the oldest in the book—and still work wonders before (or during) that next brutal workout. Have them handy and re-read whenever you need some quick encouragement between sets.

• “The greatest wealth is health.”—Virgil

• “No pain, no gain.”—Unknown

• “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.”—Confucius

Best Quotes for Setting Fitness Goals

Sometimes just getting started is the hardest part of workout motivation. We get it. That’s where the following inspiring quotes for setting fitness goals will come in handy. Be it climbing a mountain or just losing a few pounds, these motivational quotes can be well applied to your fitness goals. They’ll help you not only set resolutions, but stay on track.

• “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.”—Jim Rohn

• “You must expect things of yourself before you can do them.”—Michael Jordan

• “Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.”—Oprah Winfrey

• “Don’t train to be skinny. Train to be a badass.”—Demi Lovato

• “Strength is the product of struggle. You must do what others don’t to achieve what others won’t.”—Henry Rollins

• “Strength does not come from the physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”—Gandhi

• “Nothing will work unless you do.”—Maya Angelou

• “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”—Mark Twain

Best Quotes for Working Out

Good workout quotes can help inspire us to get off the couch and keep moving. We love exercise quotes that cut to the core of what it means to reach that next level of workout motivation.

• “The difference between those who adapt and those who don’t is a willingness to totally commit.”—Arnold Schwarzenegger

• “A bear, however hard he tries, grows tubby without exercise.”—A.A. Milne

• “If something stands between you and your success, move it. Never be denied.”—Dwayne Johnson

• “Exercise is a dirty word. Every time I hear it, I wash my mouth out with chocolate.”—Charles Schulz

• “It is a disgrace to grow old through sheer carelessness before seeing what manner of man you may become by developing your bodily strength and beauty to their highest limit.”—Socrates

• “Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”—Henry David Thoreau

Best Quotes for the Gym

Working out in a gym hits us differently. Here are a collection of the best gym motivational quotes to inspire you to keep pushing—best read with a soundtrack of clanking weight machines, thumping dumbbells hitting the floor, and the occasional pained groan.

• “I don’t count my sit-ups; I only start counting when it starts hurting because they’re the only ones that count.”—Muhammed Ali

• “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”—Mark Twain

• “Get comfortable with being uncomfortable!”—Jillian Michaels

• “Most people fail, not because of lack of desire, but, because of lack of commitment.”—Vince Lombardi

• “I’m so unfamiliar with the gym, I call it James.”—Ellen DeGeneres

• “What hurts today makes you stronger tomorrow.”—Jay Cutler

Best Quotes for Outdoor Fitness

Nature and the great outdoors sometimes comprise the best gym of all, offering inspiration in the form of winding trails and striking sunsets. Motivational workout quotes for the outdoors inspire everything from hiking and trail running to climbing and camping.

• “Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.”—unknown

• “I go to Nature to be soothed and healed, and to have my senses put together.” –John Burroughs

• It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.—Sir Edmund Hillary

• “Come forth into the light things, let nature be your teacher.”—William Wordsworth

• “Into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul.”—John Muir

• “Once you are exercising regularly, the hardest thing is to stop it.”—Erin Gray

• All those who wander are not lost.”—J.R.R. Tolkien

• “If you don’t make time for exercise, you’ll probably have to make time for illness.”—Robin Sharma

• “Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me.”—Walt Whitman

• “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”—Robert Frost

Best Quotes for Cardio and Endurance

Cardio workouts are in a league of their own. The following fitness motivational quotes are for those who love to get the heart rate up and push their limits.

• “The body achieves what the mind believes.”—Napoleon Hill

• “It never gets easier, you just get better.”—Unknown

• “When I feel tired, I just think about how great I will feel once I finally reach my goal.”—Michael Phelps

• “You can either suffer the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.”—Jim Rohn

• “Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.”—Kobe Bryant

• “You have to push past your perceived limits, push past that point you thought was as far as you can go.”—Drew Brees

• “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”—Babe Ruth

• “The human body is the best work of art.”—Jess C. Scott

Best Quotes for Strength

Motivational workout quotes about strength can be cliché, but that’s because working out and strength are core to getting in shape. These inspiring quotes extend beyond the weight rack, and inspire strength in the purest, physical sense.

• “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.”—Friedrich Nietzsche

• “If we could give every individual the right amount of nourishment and exercise, not too little and not too much, we would have found the safest way to health.¨—Hippocrates

• “Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.”—John F. Kennedy

• “Action is the foundational key to all success.”—Pablo Picasso

• “There comes a certain point in life when you have to stop blaming other people for how you feel or the misfortunes in your life. You can’t go through life obsessing about what might have been.”—Hugh Jackman

• “To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.”—Samuel Johnson

• “It is wonderful what great strides can be made when there is a resolute purpose behind them.”—Winston Churchill

• “To have courage for whatever comes in life—everything lies in that.”—Teresa of Ávila