Staying motivated and consistent with exercise is one of the biggest obstacles people face on their fitness journey. But with these 2 mental tricks, you can stay motivated during even the toughest workouts.
Staying motivated and consistent with exercise is one of the biggest obstacles people face on their fitness journey. But with these 2 mental tricks, you can stay motivated during even the toughest workouts.
Get-Fit Guy is hosted by Dr. Jonathan Su. A transcript is available at Simplecast.
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Welcome back to Get-Fit Guy. I’m your host, Dr. Jonathan Su. Every week, I’ll share science-backed tips to help you get fit, stay fit, and optimize performance.
Staying motivated and consistent with exercise is one of the biggest obstacles most people face on their fitness journey. No one can escape procrastination and avoidance when it comes to exercise from time to time.
After all, we are humans and humans seem to be hard-wired to find the path of least resistance for just about everything. Exercise is hard work and literally the path of most resistance so it takes someone special to naturally stay motivated and consistent with exercise all of the time.
I’m going to be real with you, I’m definitely not special in that way. In fact, if you really want to know the truth, I really don’t enjoy exercise most of the time.
Yet, I’ve somehow managed to stay motivated and consistent with exercise about ninety-nine percent of the time. I’ve been able to do this because of a few mental tricks I’ve learned over the years from my clients.
My clients you ask? Aren’t they supposed to be coming to me for insights and advice about fitness and physical therapy?
Of course, I have technical knowledge about fitness and physical therapy. But a lot of my clients are people who are experiencing serious health issues and it never ceases to amaze me how they’re able to stay motivated and consistent through a challenging physical training regimen to achieve a higher level of function.
What my clients have figured out is the mental game of exercise and it has helped them overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to regain their physical function. What can we learn from this and how can we apply it to our goal of staying motivated and consistent with exercise?
Keep listening to find out the 2 mental tricks you can use to stay motivated and consistent with your exercise routine.
Psychologists have found that intrinsic rewards, such as the sense of accomplishment we feel from achieving a personal goal, are more powerful motivators than external rewards like money, power, fame, or avoiding consequences.
Reminding yourself of the intrinsic rewards you get from exercise will boost your motivation when it’s time to work out. The key to intrinsic rewards is to notice what is internally rewarding when you have great workouts and create a “reward statement” that makes the connection between these two things.
For example, you might notice that you feel really tired and sluggish before exercise but energized and clear-headed afterward, or that you tend to feel unmotivated when it’s time to exercise but pumped up once you get started. These positive changes are the building blocks of your reward statement.
It may take a bit of experimentation to pinpoint exactly what makes exercise an agreeable experience for you and to create a positive statement based on it. Here are some examples of intrinsic reward statements:
After you’ve crafted your intrinsic reward statement, use it to motivate yourself to work out when the time comes. Do this by repeating the statement to yourself, out loud, a few times before exercise.
To get the full effect, you need to put a ton of passion into saying your statement while also getting your body involved. For example, you would stand with your chest open, chin lifted, and hands up and open in front of you, and say with passion, “Once I get started with exercise, I feel pumped up and I don’t want to stop.”
By putting a ton of passion into saying your intrinsic reward statement while also getting your body involved, you will be mentally, emotionally, and physically primed for exercise.
Also known as flow, the “zone” is a mental state in which a person is fully immersed in an activity. This state is associated with a feeling of energized focus, enjoyment of the activity, and a change in the sense of time.
Getting in the zone can make exercise feel less daunting, help the workout pass more quickly, and even turn it into something to look forward to. So how do you get in the zone with exercise?
First, it helps to know that you have a choice about where you place your thoughts during exercise and that your thought patterns can make exercise seem easier or harder. If your thoughts are in the future and focused on how much work you still have left to do, exercise will seem harder.
On the other hand, if your thoughts are in the present and focused on the process of your workout as it unfolds, it will seem easier. Once you know this choice exists, you can choose to keep your thoughts in the present by setting micro-goals.
Micro-goals are exactly as they sound: smaller goals within bigger goals. Endurance athletes, like marathon runners, use micro-goals all the time, whether they know it or not.
Running a 26-mile marathon while thinking “I’ve still got 20 miles to go” can have a detrimental effect on performance because the mind is in the future. To stay in the present, marathon runners frequently set micro-goals by dividing the race into six smaller races that are each four miles long, with a two-mile bonus round at the end, for example.
These smaller goals are much easier for the mind to digest, and they help the runner get in the zone during a race. You may not be a marathon runner, but you can also set micro-goals to get in the zone during exercise.
For example, the idea of performing 15 repetitions of an exercise would be harder for your mind to digest than performing 5 repetitions 3 times. You could break the 5 repetitions down even further by doing an “easy 3” and a “quick 2” and repeating that 3 times. How much easier does that sound than counting straight to 15 repetitions?
There’s no rule for how to break exercise down into smaller chunks. Find what works for you, and then focus solely on making it to that smaller goal. Then set another one. Then another.
Set micro-goals during exercise to keep your thoughts present and focused on the process of your workout as it unfolds. By doing this, you’ll get in the zone, and exercise will seem easier and go by quicker.
Give these 2 things a try and you’ll be able to stay motivated and consistent with exercise. If you have a question that you want me to answer on the show, email me at getfitguy@quickanddirtytips.com or leave me a voicemail at 510-353-3104.