Staying committed to your fitness routine as the year winds down can prove challenging, which is why we’ve put together these 5 tips to boost your motivation and help you reach your fitness goals.
Whether you’re a seasoned gym-goer or a newbie, these tips will help you stay on track and achieve the results you want.
1. Create rewards and milestones
Set and celebrate smaller milestones along the way, as 12 months is a long time to wait to reward your hard work and progress.
Set 12 monthly goals and celebrate your victories along the way. This practice can reinforce positive behaviours and boost motivation levels, which tend to dip over time.
2. Develop systems
The motivation to complete specific goals is dose-dependent – motivation levels hinge a great deal on the magnitude and relative importance of a goal. Motivation levels also ebb and intensify based on various factors.
And when your motivation falters, what do you have as a backup? The solution is a system – a concept popularised by Scott Adams, the world-renowned cartoonist and creator of Dilbert, and author of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life.
In his book, Adams talks about using systems instead of goals to achieve success. For example, losing 10 kilos is a goal-oriented approach that requires a great of willpower to stick to the plan.
That’s one of the reasons offered as to why few people can sustain weight-loss efforts over extended periods. In contrast, learning about what constitutes a healthful and appropriate diet and how to prepare food in the correct manner is a system that substitutes knowledge for willpower.
Ultimately, your system becomes what you do each day to progress towards your ultimate goal. The key here is to determine whether, if you completely ignored your goal and focused only on your system, would you still get the results.
When this happens, you make your goals attainable through a change in lifestyle, rather than short-lived quick fixes. This enables you to focus on your efforts and the process, rather than a blinkered focus on the outcome.
3. Find your fitness fit
Hitting the gym or training five to six times a week is a common approach serious athletes or committed individuals follow to achieve their sporting or body transformation goals.
However, hitting every session is difficult, if not impossible, for someone who doesn’t enjoy the environment or the activity itself.
Random training or a stale program that offers little variety and no longer challenges you is another surefire way to kill your motivation.
Take someone trying to lose weight as an example. While there are many benefits to training with weights for weight loss, it becomes really challenging to hit the gym daily if you don’t enjoy that form of exercise, or the gym environment itself.
That’s why taking the time to try different forms of exercise to find what you enjoy most can make heading out the door for a run or ride, or a group class with friends at a set time each day an easier proposition.
In these instances, the intrinsic enjoyment of the act itself is enough to get you out the door to a training session, even when your motivation levels are low.
Keeping it fresh and interesting by taking on new challenges, like different races or preparing for competitions like a HYROX race gives your training purpose and direction during each training block.
4. Up your grit score
Differences in performance or results between two individuals with similar genetics and physical abilities often come down to their ‘grit’ – how they doggedly chase after their goals, making sure they complete every training session, giving it everything they can each time.
And if they miss their target, it’s how they pick themselves back up and get straight back onto the path towards their next attempt.
Academic, behavioural psychologist, MacArthur ‘Genius’ fellow, founder and CEO of the Character Lab, and author of the New York Times bestseller, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Angela Duckworth studies grit and self-control, which her website explains are “two attributes that are distinct from IQ and yet powerfully predict success.”
In the context of behaviour, Duckworth defines grit as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.”
Based on her studies, Duckworth has identified that individuals who exhibit high levels of grit are able to maintain their determination and motivation over long periods, despite experiences with failure and adversity.
According to Duckworth: “Grit isn’t talent. Grit isn’t luck. Grit isn’t how intensely, for the moment, you want something. Instead, grit is about having … an”ultimate concern” – a goal you care about so much that it organises and gives meaning to almost everything you do. And grit is holding steadfast to that goal. Even when you fall down. Even when you screw up. Even when progress toward that goal is halting or slow. Talent and luck matter to success. But talent and luck are no guarantee of grit. And in the very long run, I think grit may matter as least as much, if not more.”
Despite her extensive research into the subject, Duckworth says that the essence of grit remains elusive.
What she has unearthed are numerous other traits and tools that we can apply to increase our ‘Grit Score’. This will harden our mettle and our resolve to achieve what we want most in life.
5. Get professional help
Elite athletes across sporting codes work with a coach and trainer, not because they don’t understand how to train or what workouts to do to achieve their goals, but because a coach adds significant value to their overall approach and ultimate performance.
A good coach or personal trainer crafts a properly periodised training plan to help you achieve your goals without wasting time and effort on the wrong approach, which ensures consistent progress toward your goal.
A coach or trainer also brings perspective, wisdom, analysis, accountability, structure and support to your training. Importantly, the cost of hiring a trainer or coach means you’re less likely to miss workouts as you don’t want to waste your money.
