workout, exercise, training Expert tips on finding workout motivation. Image:Instagram/@freeletics
If working out doesn’t come naturally to you, I’ve got some good news (sort of): It doesn’t come naturally to anyone. Literally.
“Biologically, our brains are doing everything they can to not work out,” says Amy Morin, LCSW, psychotherapist and author of 13 Things Mentally Strong People Don’t Do. “We didn't evolve going to the gym or running on a treadmill, so it's actually quite counterintuitive to be, like, ‘I'm going to get exercise for the sake of getting exercise.’”
Simply put, motivation is a universal struggle. “It's not a monumental thing that you're going through in isolation. It is absolutely normal,” says Teresa Behrend Fletcher, Ph.D., program director and professor of sport and human performance at Adler University. “I don't care who you are, I don't care what you've done. At some point, you're going to struggle with motivation.”
Of course, we know we should work out. And the more consistently, the better—if not for aesthetics or health, then at least to live a little longer. So what’s the key to making it stick? The answer might be simpler than you think.
How often have you heard that the best way to reach a goal is to make it public? Tell a friend. Better yet, put it on social! It sounds like decent advice—once the goal is out there, it’s on you to make it real or risk public failure. But this is probably the last advice you’d want to follow.
“I know everybody says to tell a friend, but there's actually research that suggests you might not want to tell anybody,” says Morin. In a study published in the journal Psychological Science, researchers at New York University observed that when subjects made their goals public, they became less likely to achieve them.
The short explanation is that your brain interprets this announcement as progress. “If you take a picture of an idealized body and put it on your vision board, or you call your friend and say, ‘Hey, I'm gonna get fit this year,’ your brain reacts as if you've already met that goal”—or at least taken a big step towards it, says Morin. “It kind of celebrates it and takes your foot off the gas.”
Similarly, we’re often told to imagine what success looks and feels like, and to use that feeling as motivation. Visualization, after all, is a tool right out of most Olympic athletes’ playbooks. The thing is, elite sprinters aren’t closing their eyes and imagining the feeling of confetti raining down; they’re visualizing every single movement they need to make to get there.
Researchers at UCLA actually studied this. Their findings, published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, found that when students visualized themselves studying hard for an exam, they vastly outperformed those who spent the same amount of time imagining themselves receiving a high grade.
This concept, known as “process simulation,” is as relevant to fitness as it is to freshmen studies, says Morin. “You're much better off visualizing yourself working hard,” she says. “Imagine yourself running, sweating, and being out of breath—not crossing the finish line of a marathon, because then you're already cheering.”
Progress is a great motivator, but you can’t always see it in the mirror. Data captured using a fitness tracker or smart home gym, on the other hand, can show you what your eyes can’t see: quantitative improvements from week to week, or even from one workout to the next.
Gamifying your progress “sort of turns you into a video game character,” says Tonal instructor Ackeem Emmons. Depending on your tracker or equipment, there are countless ways to gauge advances, from increased power output to a lower resting heart rate. Tonal 2, for example (which we reviewed here), analyzes 500 data points per second as you work out.
Beyond motivation, using real-time data to track your workouts can also help you train smarter and ultimately arrive at your goals faster. “The way they track every little detail—every rep, every pound—you can really get into the nooks and crannies of the data, and that helps out with your performance as well as guidance on what you might do the next day or what you've been lacking on,” says Emmons. “You have concrete data. You're not just freestyling. You're not trying to figure it out.”
In 2020, researchers at Sheffield University reviewed over a dozen studies that had previously looked at different ways to increase people’s gym attendance. Of the various methods tested, one of the most effective was also the simplest. “They said, ‘Just put an X on the calendar on the days you go to the gym. That was their only intervention,” says Morin. “The people who did this started going to the gym way more often than the other people who weren't told to do anything.”
“It makes us face our habits full on,” she says. “I might like to think I work out, but when I look at the calendar and see, well, I haven't done it now for three days in a row, can I still say I'm somebody who works out, or that I'm a runner if I haven't been running in a week?”
Personally, this is the one that hits home for me, and one of the reasons why I keep coming back to Apple Watch. Beyond all the great workout data it collects (which I admittedly don’t check all that often), the accompanying Fitness app displays all your past workouts in a calendar format.
“Motivation evolves as you age,” says Dr. Fletcher. “What may have motivated you at one time isn't necessarily going to work long term.”
Whereas summer abs might have motivated you to hit the gym in your 20s, priorities get reshuffled as we move through different life phases, like attaining financial independence or fatherhood. “You probably can't travel the world the way you’d imagined if you’re not able to go on a hike,” says Emmons. “And you can't be there for your kids if you're not healthy.” Getting fired up for your next workout could be as simple as taking a moment to figure out what matters to you now.
It’s also possible to fall out of love with certain kinds of fitness, and that’s okay. That just means it might be time to try something new. “We tend to be dichotomous in our thinking; it's either all in or all out,” says Dr. Fletcher. “Instead of just stopping, like, ‘Okay, I'm burned out from running, I'm going to stop working out,’ think of it as a shift, like, ‘Okay, my running phase is over for now, so what am I going to do next?’”
Via GQ US
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