how to motivate yourself to train

So yesterday I got asked about how I motivate myself to go to the gym and to me, it kind of seemed like I might not be the best person to ask. But then I thought about the fact that while I’m not that far into my own personal fitness journey, I have built a couple of really strong habits which in the long run will help me for the better.

Also, I have already helped a few people start to pick up the habits of regular exercise and training through some volunteer work and coaching that I have done. I think that it is very important to work on motivation when you first start training and building new habits so that is what this post is going to be in the context of.

So here’s a bit of a guide or understanding on how I personally motivate myself to train consistently:

If you’re just now beginning trying to run 4 times a week or going to the gym 3 times a week or anything similar to that, I think the first rule would be just to not judge yourself too much for your past efforts (or lack thereof) as well as not to get too down on yourself if you have a bad day or week.

I think this is important because a major downfall when lots of people try to start a new habit or change their life in any way is giving up as soon as they find some difficulty. Or letting themselves be less productive for three days following one bad day. 

We all know the person who starts a new diet every few months and only a few weeks in, they give up after having too much dessert at their cousins birthday party and then “gaining“ 1.5 kilos for that week (given that this is also not the best measurement of progress short term) they decide that it isn’t worth it and give up.

If this person instead said that they now have to continue working hard to lose weight, and followed up that one mistake with a week of continuing to eat well and train more often, then in the long term, they would be much better off. 

And that leads me onto the second point of motivating yourself to train more, and that is to adopt a long term mindset for training and your goals. 

If you let yourself understand that your goal is to lose a given amount of weight over 6 months and then to keep it off for life, or to build a given amount of strength so that you don’t feel weak or anything similar like that, then it can be much easier to take everything one day at a time. If you don’t see progress in one, two or three weeks time (which you won’t always) it can be much easier to keep yourself motivated and keep training as long as you know that in the long run, the effort you’re putting in now will help you achieve your goals in the long-term.

And my final tip to motivate yourself when you could quite easily just take a day off or skip a set, is to just push yourself to start and think about how you will feel at the end of that activity. Often, the most difficult part of doing something is just getting started. I know that if I have my clothes ready in the morning, and all of my stuff is together to go to the gym, it is going to be more difficult emotionally for me to put that stuff away rather than to just go. On top of this, I also know that if I skip that activity, then the rest of the day I am going to feel unmotivated and sluggish with anything else I do. Whereas on the other side of that, I know that if I go to the gym or for a run in the morning, that after that I am probably going to try and eat better, and I’m also going to feel more motivated to do some work for uni or make a post like this one. Once you get past that feeling of “I can’t be bothered because it takes too much effort” and instead you shift to “this will make me feel better both in the short and long term, I think it becomes 100 times easier to put in the effort to train and work hard towards your goals.

Now while these tips sound straight forward enough, it still takes a certain degree of just having the desire to train and improve yourself. There are still days where I just don’t feel like moving and while not nearly as often as when I first began, I do occasionally give in to those emotions. However, the biggest suggestion that I can make is to just start whatever type of training you want to start and make yourself accountable to it. And once you get started and start forming those habits, it becomes much easier the further along you get.

So those are how I personally try and stay motivated to train and work towards my goals, if you have any suggestions or tips that work for you, feel free to share them with others. I hope you found this helpful and thanks for reading.

Image from: https://officevibe.com/blog/how-to-motivate-employees