Motivation has more faces than a Rubik’s cube
Imagine. You’ve been procrastinating for many weeks now, either working at home or finding as many things as possible to occupy your mind and fill your time. You are now ready to go to a gym and resume some kind of training regimen similar to what you used to do a few years ago. You put a bit of weight on, unfortunately not where you’d like to, and you feel a bit soft and not in shape. Not a good situation when you combine that with all the other signs of an aging man.
Today you wake up early, motivated to change the course of your life. You decide to wear your “Spartans let’s dine in hell” T-shirt, and guzzle with strong authority your first protein shake made of raw chicken, MyoOxidized Branched-Chain Amino Acids 3000 and krill oil. The sun is up as you drive to the gym for your first training session since… ever. You grab a triple shot Starbucks coffee on the way and get ready for your big reunion with iron and pain and a training session that should leave you tired and happy.You remember the movements of a proper warm-up, like an old friend who has never really been out of sight. It feels good to move again, by yourself or in sync with the instructor and the rest of the class. Time to be reacquainted with some heavy implements, like barbells, dumbbells and kettlebells. You feel ready, covered with enough chalk to make you look like Tony Montana in the final scene of Scarface.You know you will probably be a bit sore tomorrow but right now, you feel tougher than a 2-dollar steak, and that’s all that matters.
How is your motivation?
Your motivation is great today, but what about tomorrow? What will be your motivation when you will feel sore? Today, if your motivation to train was a volcanic eruption, it would fit right between Mount Pinatubo and the Krakatoa. It would create a tsunami that would drown any Globo gym in the Pacific Northwest. But what if tomorrow, your motivation reaches abysmal depths, somewhere in the Mariana Trench?
It is believed that when it comes to training, motivation is everything. I think this is only part of the equation. Training is mostly a habit. Being extremely motivated one week and not the other only produces roller coaster results. It’s consistency that wins the game. It’s always better to show up for a class three times a week, than training every single day for a whole week and resting for the rest of the month. Like cheap Chinese take-away food, excessive training might feel good in the moment but leaves you unsatisfied in the long run.
What is your goal?
If motivation is as unreliable as a used car dealer in New Jersey, how to make sure that you train consistently? Start with the end in mind. Reverse engineer the process. Why do you train? Is it for Health? Esthetics? Sport? Is your goal to lose the extra pounds you put on when most of the population was fighting in the street for the last rolls of toilet paper during the Pandemic? Do you want to gain strength and mobility, while aging gracefully? See yourself as you’d like to be. Don’t be afraid to aim high, because if you don’t know what you really want from your training, it will probably be difficult to get it.Then decide when you want to reach this new YOU. As Napoleon Hill said: “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” Be realistic but not too much. You cannot lose 20 pounds in a day, unless you cut one of your legs off, but losing 20 pounds in a year is way too conservative.
Once you know your goal and your deadline, the rest is all about planning. Based on your work and family schedule, how many times a week can you really train in a consistent manner? What are the classes or training protocols that will most likely help you to reach your goal? Do you need some private instruction in order to fix some skills or help with some limitations or old injuries? Are you disciplined?Discipline has a bad rap. It reminds us of enslaved convicts rowing a giant ship, chained together and hunched by the whip of bare-chested pirates.None of this is necessary. Discipline is all about creating enough small and easy habits that you cannot skip a class or a workout, that you cannot over-eat and binge on Chocolate Fudge Tower Truffle Mousse from the Cheesecake Factory.
All you need is to make it as easy as possible for you to go to the gym and train. Set up multiple alarms and reminders, prepare your training clothes in advance, free up your schedule to avoid any delay, don’t check your email within an hour of your workout. If you show up, your training will happen, regardless of your motivation and your level of energy that day. Just go and the rest will take care of itself.
What about the actual training?
Do you need to push yourself to the edge of insanity in order to get the results you want? Do you need that every Press or every Squat you do looks more and more like something out of a sadomasochist flick? Do you need to feel so amped up that you give everyone in the gym a look that would make an onion cry, a look that scares the souls of children and brings the common man to a standstill? No need for that. It might actually be counterproductive, as every peak is surrounded by valleys. If you push too hard, you might crash the day after. Sore, tired, depressed, even injured… You don’t need more excuses than a pregnant nun. You just need consistency in your training. The recipe for success is simple: show up, do the work, rest, repeat till you reach your goal. That doesn’t sound like much. No magic pill, no new fancy fitness method, no state-of-the-art space-age equipment. Just perfecting your skills, making incremental progress, learning new skills, preventing injuries, and having fun while moving better and getting stronger.