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Improve Your Motivation to Workout Part 4

Budgeting Your Motivation

Make sure you’ve checked out Parts 1, 2, and 3 before you read this one.

Imagine that your motivation is money. The different disciplines in your life are countries with different currencies, so that your motivation is stronger in some domains, and weaker in others. Some people start with more or less money than you do, and their money may be stronger in different currencies compared to yours.

We often hope to overcome issues of fitness motivation by hoping we’ll have more of it next time. Just as hoping to win the lottery is not a good way to manage your finances, this is not a good way to maintain your motivation to workout when you’re preparing to take on a new challenge.

Money Motivation
By John McArthur on Unsplash

Continuing with this analogy, part 2 of this blog was about making sure we aren’t borrowing money from a sketchy source that will punish us with interest at a later date. Part 3 was about making sure we don’t associate our money with our self-worth or future prospects. This part will be focussed on budgeting your money.

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Improve Your Motivation to Workout Part 3

Fitness Motivation and Identity

Identity
By Felicia Buitenwerf on Unsplash

New to this series? Be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2.

It’s easy to look at all the success stories on social media and convince yourself that the people who are full of fitness motivation have some quality that you don’t. This narrative is perpetuated by captions about how “motivation is BS,” and “if you want something enough, nothing will stop you.” These statements may be true in the eyes of the person sharing them because they can’t relate to your motivation obstacles. Occasionally, it’s a lie perpetuated to portray success, garner legitimacy, or simply provide social media bragging rights.

Fitness Motivation douche
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Improve Your Motivation to Workout Part 2

Motivation Quality

Just getting started? Check out Part 1 first.

We often think about fitness motivation in terms of quantity. We complain when we have little or no motivation to workout, and want to get more. However, it’s also important that we focus on the quality of what motivates you.

What is the Source of Your Workout Motivation?

One of my favourite films is Inception. You should definitely have already seen it, but in case you haven’t, Inception is all about motivation. Inception is the task of planting an idea so deeply within someone’s subconscious that they accept the idea as their own without question. It’s exactly what we’re trying to do when we want to start a new habit, such as going to the gym or eating kale (for some reason). We want a new behaviour to become so firmly rooted in our psyche that it’s not a thirty-minute battle just to put the trainers on. This is no easy feat.

Inception Motivation
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Improve Your Motivation to Workout Part 1

Introduction

When starting a fitness habit, one of the biggest obstacles will always be finding motivation to workout. Unless you’re superhuman (or kidding yourself), you’ve probably asked yourself one of the following questions at one point:

  • How do I get motivated to work out?
  • What is causing my lack of motivation?
  • Why do I get super motivated, only to fall off the bandwagon weeks later?

The Fitness Motivation Cycle

We tend to go through cycles of motivation. Sometimes, your motivation will be super high. This leads you to set up a new training or dietary routine. A few weeks pass by if you’re lucky, then boom – it’s all over. Your motivation takes a nosedive. You give up your hard work and go back to square one. Then the next time you feel pressure to change, the cycle begins anew.

Fitness Motivation Cycle
The Fitness Motivation Cycle
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5 More Great Reasons You Should Try Strength Training

Spotting Bench Press

The benefits of strength training for women and men have been listed a million times by a million different coaches. I’m going to list them again – hopefully, with a new twist.

There’s two reasons I’ve decided to rehash this post:

  1. No matter how many times it has been said, it always needs to be said again.
  2. Strength training has been mislabelled in common gym parlance.

If you have ever performed a challenging resistance workout that made you stronger over time, then technically you have engaged in strength training. However, in my opinion dedicated strength training is more than just lifting weights – it’s a completely different workout to the ones you’ll usually see in your local gym. This distinction can cause you to miss out on some of the benefits of a committed strength training period.

So What is Strength Training, Really?

Dedicated strength training is characterised by the following features:

  • Increasing the weight you can lift at low (1-8) reps;
  • Exercises that use multiple joints and muscle groups through a long range of motion;
  • Fundamental movement patterns such as squatting, hinging, pushing, pulling, single leg work and carrying;
  • An emphasis on free weights or bodyweight (although this can be tweaked for the individual);
  • A strong focus on your technique, tweaking exercises to suit your leverages;
  • Long rest periods (usually 2-5 minutes).

Unfortunately, strength training is usually confused with:

  • Lifting the heaviest weight you can every session;
  • Spontaneously maxing out without strategy;
  • Chasing failure/soreness;
  • One resistance exercise in the middle of a circuit;
  • Going so heavy that you only move the weight a couple of inches;
  • An overreliance on machines.
Strength Training Benefits
By Victor Freitas on Unsplash
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9 Training Methods You Need to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Prepare for the Zombie Apocalypse
By Nathan Wright on Unsplash

You’re surrounded by zombies on all sides. You’re cut off from your fellow survivors. All you have for company is a rusty shovel. The zombie apocalypse is here – and if you want to survive, you’re going to have to get out of this yourself.

As the zombies close in, you think back to a time before the dead began to walk the earth. How could you have been better prepared?

One of the most rewarding signs of progress in training is feeling like you’re prepared to face any physical challenge. But if you’re training for the zombie apocalypse, then some training methods are better than others. 

Count how many of these training methods you use, and check your score at the end to learn what your odds are of surviving a brush with the living dead…

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