I recorded a few videos for Tik Tok this week around fitness motivation. As a reader of this newsletter and hopefully my book you will know that I view motivation being just one element amongst other factors, which gets way too much attention in lieu of the other areas. To demonstrate this, I created the change cycle in my book which showed how all the influencing areas are working on your results at the same time.

 

These competing areas include the plan that you follow, your previously trained in-built natural behaviour patterns, your reactions to stress and your general personality around fitness which includes the environment around you and your internal beliefs. So how do these areas show up as a lack of motivation?

If your main plan of action is just too difficult to follow then your failure to adhere to it will look like a lack of motivation. However, it could just be that you have no taste in your meals, so no wonder you keep cheating on the plan. A poor plan can include not enough taste, not enough food per se, a lack of a certain macronutrient group or an exercise programme that is way too demanding of your time or effort.

Your neural connections are all of your automatic behaviour patterns. This means, if you are using your fitness motivation to force yourself to exercise or hold yourself back from grabbing a food, it is because your natural behaviours are currently wired that way. But why do other people do these same behaviours automatically? What would you need to also act like them naturally? The answer is a combination of developing certain skills, improving specific knowledge and putting in the needed repetitions.

If all goes well when life is fine but then falls apart when stress hits you do not need more motivation, although that would be nice, your need more effective ways of handling stress, such as becoming great at breath work, meditations or EFT. Likewise, if the environment around you, your beliefs around food and exercise do not direct a lot of your behaviours in the right direction then you may have to develop this for longer lasting results. This usually involves getting around others who share the beliefs and habits that you need to encompass.

Fitness Motivation

When you do put the above in place you will find you do not need that much motivation. However, you will need a good chunk of motivation to ever do the actions within the previous different areas.

Most people have completely wrong view around motivation. You imagine that scene in the first rocky film where you are up early, running the steps in Philadelphia to glory with energy, focus and happiness pumping through your veins. This looks great in the movies but it is not at all how real life motivation works and very unlikely you will attain this.

To increase your fitness motivation, you need only 1 or 2 new thoughts that will evoke  emotions within you. You then need to remember this thought frequently enough during the day or week to be able to direct it to the key actions to bring success.

The actual thoughts that will bring emotion vary but what surprises people a lot is that the emotion that drives change often is not a happy, high energy and focused feeling. Often it is anger, fear, or competition that drives you. It is not an inspired desire to do something but a rushed, forced, now or never ultimatum to take action. This is just how we are wired; we do more to avoid pain than to grab glory. Ideally you would have some positive and negative emotional inputs. 

What Does This Mean For You

Generating more motivation can transform your adherence to food and exercise. One major burst of motivation for a few months can transform the trajectory of your whole health and fitness forever. To achieve this, you should be looking for 1 or 2 new thoughts that may generate this motivation from inside you, the easiest way to do this is to answer goal questions and visualise the answers. You also need to pair this thinking to some activity so you do not only think about it once a month. Try the following exercise:

-Imagine at your next landmark birthday, e.g. 40th, 50th, how you would feel if your health, fitness and body shape was exactly where you wanted it to be?

-At that same landmark birthday, imagine if your health, fitness and body shape was way worse than it is now, how would you feel?

-What do you care about the most in life / give most your attention towards, how would being excellent in health, fitness or body shape aid this main life priority?

-Who would benefit or feel proud of you getting into a great place with your health & fitness?

-Who would be really annoyed or jealous of you getting into your best shape with good health and fitness?

Pair the answers above by thinking about them in one or more of the following events:

-Before Exercise
-During or After Exercise
-When brushing your teeth
-Before you eat a meal
-When meeting your friend or trainer.

For my best exercise motivation periods, I had a very clear image and feeling of an upcoming event, one winter the anger of an awful final 400m race drove me to train hard ready for the next summer. In bodybuilding, the desire to look my best, get a trophy was equal to the fear of not looking lean enough on show day. When doing food related things there is a feeling of inspiration of helping my body alongside a thought of if I do not help it now in some way I will be a total mess and in trouble in the future.

I would think about this every morning and every night at least if not more times during the day. In addition, I would use my spreadsheet to write what I did each day as well as talking about my training with people. There is a direct correlation for me about how often I think about the goal as well as check in on progress and actual amount of action taken. This is true for most people; the key is to first generate a feeling and then find a way to repeatedly check in with it.

For success of course you must still channel this energy into doing whatever actions are needed for success, but a deeper motivation or drive will usually do that for you.  Ultimately, motivation isn’t about waiting for inspiration but about creating it—and when you channel that energy into consistent action, there’s no limit to what you can achieve. If looking to develop your motivation and results but not sure where to start then reply to this email to discuss options about working with me. 

Photo – The change cycle from my book and the results of my motivated training blocks in bodybuilding and on the athletics track;

 

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