How to get more motivation to exercise. A practical step by step guide
- Kelvin Ng
- Jun 27, 2023
- 9 min read
INTRODUCTION
"I don't have motivation to exercise!! How do I get more motivation??"
This is a struggle most of us had before, or even right now. While we always try to find ways to boost motivation. Yet for some reason we just ignore the even more basic but important question: What is motivation?
Why do we have motivation? How does motivation work? What types of motivation are there and which one suits me the most?
We keep trying to solve a problem without attempting to understand the actual problem.
Even for myself, if not for this article, I would jump straight to solutions without understanding the basics as well. But I can tell you right now, if you do want to fix the "NO MOTIVATION" issue, build a sustainable exercising habit, or any other habits, you have to understand the theory behind it.
Upon reading this article, you may understand what motivation is, how it works, its types and components, and of course, the practical strategies you can apply to yourself today to build a sustainable exercising habit, overflowing with motivation for your entire fitness journey (Hopefully).
TABLE OF CONTENTS
THEORY
WHAT IS MOTIVATION?
Definition - Motivation is a motive for why we do certain things.
Oftentimes people think motivation only comes into play when they are trying to achieve a goal. But in fact, it happens all the time. Why you eat, why you drink, why you brush your teeth, basically every behaviour we do in our daily lives are driven by motivation.
This is very important, while we mostly think we are lacking in motivation to do certain things, we are more just having too much motivation to do something else.
2 TYPES OF MOTIVATION
Extrinsic motivation (EM) - A type of motivation that arises from external outcome or rewards such as: Status, trophies, money, certificates etc.
Intrinsic motivation (IM) - A type of motivation that arises from internal gratification or rewards such as: go on a hike because it is fun, teach your nephew to drive because it is rewarding, and go to exercise because it feels good after a big sweat.
3 COMPONENTS OF MOTIVATION
Activation - The decision to initiate a behaviour to the goal. It is like a spark that propels us into taking action, or as I always love describing it as “Starting the car by turning the key.” It gives us momentum and sets us up for the remaining components of motivation. For example, sign up for an online coaching application form from your personal trainer.
Persistence - The continued effort to the goal, in other words, take action. There will be times of failure and disappointments throughout the journey, but by persistence, you may develop resilience over adversity and become mentally stronger to overcome obstacles. Moreover, practice makes perfect, which leads to better intensity as well. For example, show up to your personal training sessions, exercising at your own times.
Intensity - The amount of effort you put into the goal. The more effort you put into each training session, the more results it might yield, and it may motivate you more to persist. For example, the intensity you put into each training session.
THE GAME PLAN
1. INTRINSIC MOTIVATION (OUR TARGET)
Aaron: “I want to exercise because I want to lose 50 lbs, be healthier and get my wife to love me more again.”
Brian: “I want to exercise because it feels good and gives me confidence.”
Based on Aaron’s and Brian’s reasons for starting an exercising habit. Who do you think is more likely to sustain it?
I believe you would have guessed Brian, right? Whenever we are starting a new habit, we focus almost entirely on EM, just like Aaron did. However, many researches have been showing IM often leads to more positive outcomes and drive to sustain. Here are the benefits of improving intrinsic motivation:
Sustainable. IM generally comes from personal enjoyment, that means whenever we perform the tasks, we find it inherently rewarding and fulfilling. This type of motivation tends to be more sustainable.
Creativity = more fun. As we are intrinsically motivated, we are often not limited by a specific goal or outcome, this can lead us into coming up with more new and fun ideas to try on, and explore, which makes the journey even more fun.
Personal satisfaction. The most obvious one. Again as it is intrinsically motivated, we tend to have more personal satisfaction over the behaviour, which not only allows us to have motivation to push harder while enjoying it.
Hence, in this article, our game plan for improving motivation will be mostly focusing on enhancing intrinsic motivation.
Related article: https://www.workstars.com/recognition-and-engagement-blog/2020/02/24/5-studies-highlighting-the-power-of-intrinsic-motivation/
2. 3 COMPONENTS FRAMEWORK
The 3 components of motivation are important because they work closely together to drive and sustain our behaviours, and goals.
Activation starts the spark, Persistence keeps going despite challenges, and Intensity puts in the effort to get you one step closer to the goal. At the same time, persistence can increase the intensity over time by improving the skill. Similarly, higher intensity that yields better results tend to keep us more motivated to persist or to even ACTIVATE another new goal as well.
Collectively, they establish a cohesive motivational framework that sustains motivation and increases likelihood of success.
PRACTICAL STRATEGIES
As I was doing the research for this topic, I found there were many articles focusing on the theoretical perspective of how we can improve motivation such as: Set realistic goals, track progress etc… Nothing we do not already know. Hence I would like to include practical strategies on what are the exact things you can do today, to boost your motivation.
I will also include the storytelling part, where I take on the role as Aaron’s personal trainer, showing you a step by step of how I help him to boost his motivation.
ACTIVATION
1. GOAL SETTING
Goal setting is always the first step for every great plan that happens. Without a clear goal, it is like not starting a car or driving without a destination. Hence we will need to set a goal, the more specific the better. We should try to avoid setting goals like: I want to lose fat/ I want to get more fit/ I want to build some muscle. This is like saying I want to drive to Australia. Um… which state? Which city? Which region?
For Aaron’s goal: “I want to exercise because I want to lose 50 lbs, be healthier and get my wife to love me more again.” He had solid fat loss number goals to shoot for, but needed more specificity for being healthier and the part about getting his wife to love him more again. As we discussed, we reframed his goal as this:
“I want to exercise because I want to lose 50 lbs, be healthier by feeling more energetic, more mobile, more cardiovascular endurance and aesthetically more appealing by having visible abs, arms muscle definition so that I feel more confident around my wife.”
2. IDENTIFY THE TASKS
Identifying the tasks that we do provides a clear direction and purpose for our goal. It is like planning the route to your destination, outlining all the checkpoints of where we will be heading until we reach the final destination. Again, it has to be specific, outlining as detail as possible of what you should be doing.
Aaron decides that he will be running a 3 day training program per week, with 2 days weight training, and 1 day cardio with stretching exercises after each sessions:
Day 1 - Push workout
Squat 4x8
Leg press 3x10
Barbell bench press 3x10
Dumbbell shoulder press 3x12
Chest and shoulder stretch
Day 2 - Pull workout
RDL 4x8
Hamstring curl 4x8
Wide grip pulldown 4x10
Bicep curl 3x12
Back and shoulder stretch
Day 3 - Cardio
15 min treadmill jogging at 110bpm HR
Lower body stretches
3. SMALL WINS
Think of small wins as smaller versions of Activation. As we already know, Activation gives us momentum, unfortunately they start wearing out as time goes by. Hence, giving yourself small wins in between your main goal is a great idea to boost momentum throughout the journey. Imagine doing a 5 hour drive to wonderland, to make it less boring, you set 3-5 checkpoints of interesting locations so that other than the final destination. From that you now also look forward to the checkpoints, and it makes the 5hour drive a lot less suck!
These small wins can literally be anything. But be mindful to keep them as small achievable goals. The goal is to have SMALL WINS, proof to yourself that you can be consistent and feel good about it.
Aaron understands that the main priority of the small wins is not about achieving anything, but to motivate himself and feel good from these achievements. So he decided not to be ambitious: Strength goals: Squat 55kg 5 reps (Current: 50kg 5reps)
Bench press 35kg 5 reps (Current: 33kg 5 reps)
Finish 1500m jog in 20 mins (Current: 22mins)
Consistency goals:
Finish all 3 workouts every week for at least 8 weeks
PERSISTENCE
4. NO ACTION = KILLS MOTIVATION
Take Action!! As a driver, if you don't step on the accelerator, the car will not take you anywhere. Once you have your goals and small wins figured out, you have to put in the work. This is the crucial process in order for motivation to work. Not putting in action is the single best way to kill your motivation.
No action > No intensity > No progress > No more spark/ activation = 0% motivation
Aaron has a 9-5 day job, does get exhausted and stressed and sometimes just wants to skip training, watch netflix instead. But he knew that not putting in action is very dangerous for his motivation. Hence he kept going even though there were rough days, he found ways to make it work.
5. TRACK PROGRESS
Tracking progress is another form of giving yourself a small win, and it is also a great way to boost your intrinsic motivation. Seeing your progress (your growth curve) can be highly motivated and makes you want to keep doing it. For example, the snapstreaks on snapchat. Seeing a 100/500/1000 streak is just somehow oddly satisfying and it makes you want to keep doing it for no reason.
Whenever Aaron completes a training session, he marks a tick on his physical calendar. Over time, as he sees the consistent 3 ticks each week on the calendar, it motivates him to not break that streak.
6. MAKE IT FUN
No matter what you do, there will be someone in this world who just can't love exercising. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make it fun as well. Stealing the idea - Habit Stacking from James Clear, to make exercising more fun, you can simply link that to some other thing that you already have been doing.
Aaron had been exercising for 4 months now, no he still does not like exercising. But I thought of 2 ways for him to look forward to each training session.
I found out Aaron recently has been enjoying watching Game of thrones, and he was saving up money to travel to Japan, but never started saving money.
So I got him to do 2 things:
He can watch an episode of Game of thrones while doing cardio. He ended up doing a lot more than his initial 15min cardio for the session!!
Each time he completes a training session, he will put $30 into a physical jar. This makes him looking forward to each training session even more.
INTENSITY
7. PUT IN THE EFFORT IF YOU WANT FASTER RESULTS
The more effort you put (Assuming you are doing it the right way) into each training session, the sooner you may see results, the more motivated you are. Imagine driving a dreadful long highway of 50 kilometres but going at a speed of 20km/hr, how dreadful would it be? I know lots of clients complaining to their trainer that the training is too tough/the weights are too heavy. While you may hate them now, you will thank them later. They are just helping you to get to your first check point 1 day sooner.
For the first 2 months of training, Aaron definitely did not enjoy it every time I asked him to add weight to the exercises during the sessions. One time I asked him:
“Aaron. Why do you think I am asking you to do this? Add 1 more rep, add 2.5kg on your squats... Why am I asking you to do this? Is it because I want to torture you for fun? I don't get a single benefit pushing you to do that extra rep. You are the one who is benefiting from it.”
Since then, he never complains, and keeps training hard.
8. WORK WITH A TRAINER
I don’t think I need to elaborate much with this. Even though I don’t explain anything about the role of a personal trainer, anyone can visualise how it works when a personal trainer is present at your training session.
When Aaron is training on his own, he usually underestimate how much he can actually lift. While he thought he could only squat at 40kg in 5 reps. With me being there, he executed 60kg in 8 reps.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Find ways to feed your intrinsic motivation
Utilize the 3 components of motivation to structure the game plan towards your goal
Regularly ACTIVATE yourself with small wins.
No ACTION = Kills your motivation.
INTENSITY > better results > more motivation
BIGGEST TAKEAWAY - DON'T GIVE UP UNTIL YOU REACH THE FIRST CHECKPOINT
If there is only one thing you can take home from this article, I want it to be this - Keep taking action, until you reach the first checkpoint (small win).
There is a huge wave of motivation waiting for you at the first checkpoint. We humans love achievements. For example, if you put in hard work to train for 3 months and see great results from progress photos, it naturally motivates you to keep going.
Hence, you have to keep walking, motivated or not. If you choose not to walk, nothing is going to get you there, and you are basically killing your own opportunity to reach the first wave of massive motivation. This is why not taking action kills your motivation.
So next time, when you are feeling lazy to hit the gym, say this phrase to yourself: "No action kills my motivation."
Hope it helps. If you have any questions regarding motivation, building an exercising habit, shoot me an email to: kelvin@coachkelvinng.com or if you are looking for someone to help you build the entire fitness program so you do not have to figure everything out yourself, check out - 1on1 online coaching
Be 1% better,
Kelvin
Comments