Increasing and Maintaining Motivation Towards Fitness Goals

Introduction

When it comes to exercising, getting healthier, and improving your overall level of physical fitness, there is one reality that almost everyone can relate to: consistency and staying on track with health and fitness goals is difficult! No matter how determined you may feel when you first make a fitness goal, there is a very difficult obstacle that you need to overcome on a regular basis. I refer to that as “everyday life”. Whether this is family-related, work-related, or something else, life does not come without struggles. Luckily though, there are strategies that can help keep you on track and stay motivated no matter what those struggles may be. By utilizing these various strategies outlined below, I can guarantee success in whatever fitness goals you decide to pursue no matter how much everyday life tries to get in your way.

Important First Steps

I want to first start off by reminding you to not rush into an exercise program too quickly. If you want to achieve a greater level of physical fitness, the first step should always be a visit to your primary care physician to receive a thorough physical examination. Even if you believe you are already in perfect health, it’s better to be safe than sorry. Plus, getting the full approval from your primary care physician to start an exercise program may further increase your motivation and self-confidence to begin that exercise program.

To give yourself a high likelihood of success in improving your health and physical fitness, it is critical you don’t immediately determine your fitness goal(s). Take the time to think through not just what your goal is, but all the reasons why that goal is important to you. Write them down on a piece of paper and then read the reasons out loud to yourself. By physically writing the reasons down, you have made a permanent product that will keep you accountable for following through and taking action with those goals. After taking the time to really evaluate your goals in depth, you will begin to feel excited about your future, as well as feel motivated to get going right then and there, which can be invigorating!

After beginning the process of increasing your physical activity and working towards your fitness goals, there are a couple of strategies that I highly encourage you to start implementing immediately. Doing this ensures you continue making progress and fully maintain all of that motivation you currently have.

Strategy #1

Immediately after you get home from the gym or wherever you did your workout, go onto your computer (or you can use your smartphone) and look up the health benefits associated with the type of workout you just completed. I guarantee this is going to make you feel amazing! You will be gaining significant positive reinforcement from reading articles that explain all the reasons why your workout was beneficial for your health and wellbeing. As an example, if you just went for a harder or farther run than you have ever previously done, you may experience feelings of exhaustion or fatigue, which isn’t very comfortable (especially if you’re not an experienced runner). By going onto Google and typing in “what are the health benefits of running?”, it will come up with literally thousands of articles that will explain all the reasons why the run you just completed was worthwhile (even if you’re completely exhausted and already feeling sore).

Strategy #2

The other strategy that I encourage you to try has to do with utilizing “positive self-talk”. Whether you say it in your head, or out loud, your inner dialogue you have with yourself before, during, and after working out will highly influence your attitude and the way you behave in an exercise setting (Haff & Triplett, 2016). Through positive self-talk, you are able to continuously reinforce to yourself why the workout you are about to do, currently are doing, or have just finished doing, is making a positive impact on your physical health. This can go hand-in-hand with the first strategy by using self-talk to remind yourself of all of the benefits your body is experiencing in accordance to articles you have viewed after completing previous workouts.

The End Result

By staying on top of utilizing those two strategies, you can begin to gain what is known as “psychological momentum”. Psychological momentum explains that after a few positive workout experiences, your self-confidence begins to increase. This psychological momentum leads to you wanting to workout even harder and/or longer next time. Through psychological momentum, you may reach a point where working out becomes more of a habit and less of an obligation. This is known as “autonomy”. Autonomy (also known as self-determination) is associated with intrinsic motivation. Having intrinsic motivation means that the workout is already enough of a motivational factor in itself. Oftentimes, after reaching the autonomy phase, there is a solid chance that you will no longer even need to utilize my two suggested strategies.

References

Haff, G.G., & Triplett, N.T. (Eds.). (2016). Essentials of strength training and conditioning (4th ed.). Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics