Motivation..

Its hard keeping motivated sometimes, even me who is very obsessive about her training finds it tough sometimes to get on that rower. It happens to us all, the difference with some people (including me) is that even when the thought of training is not ‘ floating my boat’ I still do it anyway. Take today for example, I had seen one of my hardworking clients and had pencilled in my training for late morning, I had a cancellation too so moved my training up. Now earlier on I was looking forward to my session, it's a new cycle of training so a brand new session that I haven't attempted yet. The intensity wasn’t killer either which was a nice thought. Granted I felt a little tired as I was rudely awaken by (what we think) was a box of lego tipping over in the loft at 5:45 - I know!! So by 10am today I was yawning and the thought of just over an hour of training on the erg wasn’t filling me with much enthusiasm! These days though are the ones that you need to make that habit strong, once you start the session and when your at the halfway point you will thank yourself for doing it.

Motivation is easier to come across if you have an aim\target in mind, if your just exercising for the sake of it and hit a wall with regards to enthusiasm it will be tough getting back on the horse as they say. Targets are a way to measure progress but also to grow that commitment and consistency within your sessions, it's there to ignite that fire of you wanting to succeed, and reach your goal. If you have no goal then when the thoughts of “I can’t be bothered” or “I feel tired” start to surface it will be hard to quieten them, because after all what are you doing it for?

So the first piece of advice is work out what you want out of exercising, it could be to improve your mood, it could be a complete overhaul of your lifestyle choice, it could be for health reasons such as high blood pressure, cholesterol needing to be lowered or to promote weight loss alongside a healthy eating plan.

All the above reasons are valid and will hopefully build that commitment you NEED to be successful. I think you also need some kind of support, whether that be from a friend, partner or exercise professional, its someone that you can ask advice, or that can motivate you if your energy is waning one week. Someone who will be there to hear you and to help you throughout this process. It could just be that person is needed to look after the children for that precious hour you go for a run or the gym. Unfortunately fitness is one of those things that does have parameters that need to be overcome on occasion due to other responsibilities we have in our lives such as work and family. When you start exercising you will start appreciating the ‘free’ time you have that you can use to exercise in, that 30-40 minutes 3 times a week where you can put on those headphones and move are precious and are very important to your mental health - take it from me.

You won’t ever -hopefully- want to give the them up, but if there are situations that arise where you have to miss a session due to unforeseen circumstances , please put it into context and realise it's just a missed session, not the end of your exercising and a slippery slope to being unfit again! Once your able to get to that next session in, make the most of it and remember how you felt missing your last, also try hard to keep the memory of how you feel at the end of your first session back. Yes it may feel a little uncomfortable physically or even mentally depending on how hard you work but it will be totally worth it to feel those endorphins swimming around again!