Finding the motivation to get out and exercise is something many of us struggle with. There are days when you simply don’t feel like it, and this is completely normal.
However, when we do push through that lack of motivation, we often find we really enjoy our workouts, so it’s well worth going the extra mile and exercising even on the difficult days.
If you’re struggling with motivation, then these five tips should help.
Goal Setting
Setting goals is a great way to keep yourself motivated for exercise. We all know how it feels; you get into something for a while, but your motivation gradually decreases. When you’ve got goals to work towards though, this is much less likely to happen.
Make sure you’re setting SMART goals, that give you plenty of things to aim for, and you’ll find you’ve got some added motivation to get out there and exercise.
Rewards
Part of good goal setting is rewarding yourself when you achieve something. If you’re hitting your targets and exercising regularly, then you should feel happy about the hard work you’ve done.
Giving yourself a small reward is a great way to do this and it also helps spur you on to achieve even more. The rewards don’t have to be big, but just a little something to say well done and keep going.
Tech
There are some amazing gadgets out there that can help you with your exercise and they can be well worth investing in. Gadgets such as a fitness tracker with blood pressure monitor can enable you to keep track of your progress and watch out for your health.
One of the difficulties with working out can be that it’s difficult to see improvements. However, when you’ve got a watch that takes care of things like how many calories you’re burning, this becomes much easier.
When you can actually see your performance improving with cold, hard data it’s much easier to motivate yourself for the next workout session.
Clothing
It’s much harder to motivate yourself to exercise if you don’t have the right gear.
For example, you should be getting ready to take a run, but it’s raining heavily and you don’t have any waterproof clothes. While the rain might have sapped some of your motivation, the fact you don’t have the right clothes is sure to remove any motivation that was left.
If you’re going to exercise effectively, then you need the right equipment, so make sure you’ve got it.
Don’t Put Too Much Pressure on Yourself
Exercise should be about having fun and staying healthy. Beyond this, you can have all the goals you want, but make sure they’re not robbing you of the enjoyment of working out.
Often people start out doing something because they enjoy it, but then they start to put all this pressure on themselves to improve. There’s nothing wrong with exercising purely for enjoyment though, so don’t lose sight of this.
