Firstly, I would like to thank my friend Meda for giving me the idea for this article. We had a nice chat a few days ago and she told me that she finds it hard to get back into training and she would have liked for me to live closer to her so we can train together. I told her that it is hard for me to motivate myself at times.
It is easier to sit on your sofa and watch TV and eat some snacks, isn’t it?
It is indeed!
I find it difficult to motivate myself to workout, even though I work in a gym. I have a gym at home and I still find it hard sometimes to put on my workout gear on and get going. But, once I’ve started I don’t want it to end. Exercise is very addictive.
I am not writing this article to try and determine you to start working out or to tell you how healthy it is to exercise regularly. No way, I want to tell you the reality and that I understand the struggles that we all have.
We see on social media all these influencers that tell you how important it is to exercise, how to do the exercise correctly, how to eat healthy, they show you how often they train and all the exercises they do, but no one tells you about the struggle you are going to have to motivate yourself either to start exercising or to keep the momentum going.
I want to tell you that the most important thing in all this equation is YOU.
THINK!
What is your goal? Do you want to work hard to achieve it or is it going to be just a dream without a plan?
Be true to yourself, you are the only one that will never lie to you. Excuses are ok, for the days you are not ok.
My secret? Plan your workouts for the day ahead. Plan even the time you will do the workout so you don’t find excuses. It doesn’t always work, like I said, sometimes excuses are stronger than your plan, goal, dream.
My work place is very far from home so each day I have to travel 2.5 hours each way. It is very tiring and most times when I get home I am too tired to exercise. There are times I can squeeze in 20 minutes, but lately, I’ve been looking for excuses.
Each Saturday or Sunday I am doing an outdoor run. No excuses! That means I have to do it no matter what. Finding excuses not to do it will set me back a lot so that is motivation enough for me to keep showing up.
The other way to motivate myself was to get back into teaching classes again. I’ve said many times that I think I should retire from teaching as my injuries are quite serious and I don’t want to damage more that is already damaged but my first love was group exercise and for some reason I always go back to it. I am lucky I can do this and that I have another way of motivating myself to work out.
To conclude, there is no recipe, no motivational speech that will make you start working out or keep you going. It all comes from within. Determination and consistency are the main keys. Now, you have the keys, it is up to you what you do with them!
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