How to keep exercising when everything is against you

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

General tips and tricks to help you stay on track no matter the circumstances.

Value the process more than the result

The fitness industry beckons people by manipulating long-term goals (slim body, muscle definition), as well as guilt: everyone looks like gods, and you are a bag. This generates income for the gyms, but leaves the person without results.

Any extrinsic motivation is short-term. If it is not strong enough, the person stops exercising before reaching the goal, if it is enough - after he has received what he wants: lost weight, pumped up, cured pain in the neck and back. After some time after this, the fat returns, the muscles go away, and the problem areas begin to hurt again.

Intrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is long-term. If you realize that life is worse without training than with it, that your body just needs to move, sweat and gasp to feel good, then do not give up, regardless of external conditions.

Building intrinsic motivation takes time and immediate rewards during or after each workout.

Find immediate gratification, an incentive to get you engaged.

It can be a feeling of pleasant tiredness in the body and calmness in thoughts. A sense of your own rightness. The realization that your body is strong and healthy. Or pleasant communication with like-minded people. You have to get something out of every workout, otherwise, give up.

Don't do what you hate

If you absolutely don't like your workouts and after two weeks of training they still feel like hell, try something different. You don't have to force yourself to do things that are psychologically difficult for you. I know people who hate running and gymnastics, but love barbell exercises. If they associated sport with running, they would recognize themselves as unsportsmanlike.

Find a sport that doesn't jerk you at the mention of it.

But at the same time, do not expect universal love - this is the other extreme, because of which it may turn out that you do not have your favorite sport.

Don't expect big love

Remember, you don't have to love the sport completely. The main thing is that he pleases you with something.

I love exercise with my body weight. But in intensive complexes, when it's really hard, they don't please me at all. I hate exercises in which you have to raise the bar over your head, but at the same time I am proud of myself when I manage to do a clean and jerk with a new weight.

Be kinder to yourself

Some people like the tough motivation: “You have to! If he couldn't, then he didn't want to! - and similar aggressive statements.

They often do not take into account the circumstances: one person lives next to the park, the other - in a polluted and cramped center. One has a quiet job, the other has rush jobs, stress and physical labor. One went in for sports since childhood, the other was even in a special group at school.

Consider your circumstances and tone down your inner motivator tyrant. If your workout doesn't work out, don't be in a hurry to scold yourself. Just think about why it happened and how you can prevent it from happening in the future.

Combine business with pleasure

Combine multiple goals. For example, involve friends or relatives in training, and you will see each other much more often than usual.

My best friend and I actually only see each other in the gym. That's five to six hours a week - much more than we could spend together, given work and family. The time between sets is never boring, and I always have additional motivation to come to training: to see and discuss everything that has accumulated over the week.

Prepare in advance

This will make it harder for you to quit exercising and it will be easier for you to form a habit. Notify your family about your plans, pack a bag with sports things, download more music to the player. With these preparations, you will have no doubt whether to go or not.

Plan your time and stop assassination attempts

Many people prioritize work, family, friends, but not self-care.

Shift your priorities and you will see time for sports suddenly appear on a busy schedule.

In my schedule, three nights a week are reserved for training. Nobody encroaches on them, all friendly meetings, work tasks and other activities are easily and simply transferred to other days and hours. Get yourself a time like this, and let it be inviolable.

Set a pass limit

If you can't exercise on certain days, at least set yourself a limit on how much time you can spend without exercising. For example, if you know that the holidays are coming, a blockage at work, or other circumstances, you need to work out before that so as not to exceed the limit.

Don't be discouraged if someone is progressing faster

All people have different workability: some have to plow in order to achieve what others do playfully. You can practice for two years, gradually achieving certain success, and then a newcomer will come to the gym and catch up with you in two weeks. In such a situation, it is easy to despair and quit sports, admitting that you are not made for it.

Don't compare or blame yourself. You may have different ages, sports experience, genetically determined characteristics: muscle length, number of fast and slow muscle fibers, excitability of the nervous system. You are like two different planets - just as complex and absolutely incomparable.

If you have successes, and training is enjoyable, do not hesitate to give up because of comparisons. But if there is no success at all, it's time to change something.

If something doesn't work, change it

There are many training systems. Some suit you, others make you suffer. If your workouts do not work, although you have been exercising regularly for a long time, change them. Try something else, otherwise you may have the wrong opinion: "Nothing helps me, sport is not for me."

Study at home

If you have reasons not to leave the house for training, such as a small child, lack of time or money, bad weather or shyness, you can easily exercise in a spare room, in the hallway, in the kitchen.

Some of my classes take place at home: there is simply no time to waste in the gym as much as I want. Therefore, I added two home workouts to the three workouts in the gym.

You have no idea how many exercises can be done using the tools at hand. Most recently, I lunged around the room with a 13 kg child on my shoulders, and when he got tired - with a seven-kilogram tent. But in fact, there are many more possibilities.

Promise yourself to exercise slowly

This can help if you are mentally tired rather than physically tired. In such a state, for example, after intense mental work, it is very difficult to force yourself to practice.

Try to fool yourself into promising to make your workout easier than usual. Chances are, in the process, you will get involved and do as much as you always did.

After work, I often say to myself: “You’re tired, do three laps instead of five, and then you’ll sit down to dinner.” In the end, I have never done less. When you have already completed three circles, you feel that you do not seem to be tired, you can still, and you finish it to the end.

Use music

Music sets the mood, entertains, motivates. I can't imagine how you can do a long cardio without music: time flies with it, and you move more actively, adjusting to the rhythm.

And this applies not only to training, but also to preparation for them. If I’m not in the mood to train, on the way to the gym I play my “Get to Workout” playlist. There are many songs to which you want to perform feats, be cool and heroically practice until you lose consciousness.

She listened to a couple of tracks - from a lifeless rag she turned into an athlete who craves feats, thrusters and burpees in a weighted vest. Well, maybe not thrusters …

Watch the video

Instead of music for motivation, you can use a visual series - video. Watch a few videos of people who play the same sport as you.

Videos from competitions, motivating videos with cool music, even just some kind of challenge or a story about technology, will do. Five minutes of watching and you're ready to practice.

Share your experience: what helped you get used to training, what motivates you to train and how do you force yourself to train when you are terribly reluctant?