Needing Workout Motivation?
As I’ve noted many times in my blogs as well as essays, I get asked a lot of questions in the gym, or even amongst friends and acquaintances outside of the gym. Naturally, some are better than others, such as do you think my particular case of Ankylosing Spondylitis is something that should be holding me back, or is there something you can do to help me feel better, and be more ambulatory? That’s a very good question, and one that needs to be answered on an individual level, as I have worked with Ankylosing Spondylitis a great many times, and very successfully. How can I lose 20 pounds by next week isn’t as great of an intellectual query. As strange a question as it sounds, one question I get asked rather frequently is how can I find the motivation to workout? Unfortunately, I can’t call upon my decades of experience as an Austin personal trainer or gym owner to solve this personal riddle for people. The bottom line is that workout motivation must come from within. and there is no way to circumnavigate that.
One reason people cite for wanting to hire a personal trainer, is that they will hopefully get motivated to workout. This is completely as far from reality as you can get. I am not a therapist, nor am I a cheerleader. As a personal trainer, I am one who understands how the body works, how it is put together, what effects what in the fluidity of movement, exercises for each individual, condition etc, etc. That will allow me to guide you, the client, through the workouts in order to meet your personal goals, whatever they may be. Some trainers, especially the big box gym and/or inexperienced personal trainers, will act like cheerleaders and promote their ability to motivate you to fitness, often by showing off their stunning physiques. Ultimately, that falls well short of the mark as it becomes increasingly obvious to the trainee that they will never look like that unless they spend years eating properly and working out laboriously. That’s tough to do without only a superficial motivation.
I have always figured there are 3 truly good sources of workout motivation. The first is the mirror. If you have reached your wit’s end about how far you have let yourself go, you may be inclined to want to do something about it. The problem here, oftentimes anyway, is that when we have let ourselves go for so long, the recourse and remediation of those effects can seem like an insurmountable mountain. If you have top lose a few pounds, that’s one thing. If, however, you are staring down a weight loss goal of 70 pounds, for example, it’s a pretty daunting prospect as a complete lifestyle overhaul is in order.
The second source of workout motivation could potentially be that of an athlete needing to improve his or her abilities at their particular sport, so sport specific workouts are mandated if they are to reach their potential. If this is a high school student wanting to be on the basketball team and needs to work on lateral explosiveness, for example, glutes, adductors, and core work will be needed, as well as the remedying of whatever imbalances are present. This isn’t too big of a task, and there is a potentially decent amount of workout motivation present, if they wish to join their peers on the playing field. For professional athletes, on the other hand, the workout motivation would be exponentially greater, as there are many dollars in contracts and sponsorships hanging in the balance. This particular trainee would have quite a lot to gain, or lose, for that matter, by not showing up to the gym regularly and devoting their best efforts therein.
The third sincere source of workout motivation, in my opinion anyway, should be the most inspiring, and is actually a bit different than the others in that there is much more in the balance than your vanity or potential athletic potential. The third and final source of workout motivation could come from a bad health report from a physician. If you have high LDL cholesterol readings on your blood work chart, for example, you should consider increasingly your activity level to counteract the looming and inevitable cardiac health ramifications. If that’s not enough of a workout motivation, I’m not sure there is much else that can do it.
Ultimately, it matters little what you use for motivation, so long as you find it. The biggest mistake I’ve seen for all the years I’ve been a personal trainer, is that people look to others for their workout motivation. That, like anything, must come from with you. You wouldn’t get sufficiently motivated to become a lawyer, for example, because you saw someone else you admired become one. It would be a fleeting thought at best as opposed to a deep determination to get through all of the work year after year in order to be like that other guy. Paying a trainer for motivation or accountability, though a popular and common practice, is a bad one that is doomed to fail. When you are truly ready to workout, for whatever reason, that is when you should explore gyms and potentially personal trainers. Otherwise you’re setting yourself up for failure and potentially casting a negative light and potentially negative association with exercise which could limit your ability in the future to succeed when you have truly found the workout motivation within yourself.
Andy
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