If you’ve well and truly lost your fitness motivation, you’re not alone. We’ve all somewhat ‘been through it’ this year, and many people are suffering from burn out – even those who feel like they’ve been massively unproductive. Maybe you’ve fallen out of your regular fitness routine and you feel like you want it back.
It’s totally normal to feel like you’re all over the place at the moment, so you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you’re struggling to get back to where you were with your health and fitness. That being said, you can start taking small steps now to getting your motivation back and getting back into a good routine. Read on and you’ll find 13 ways to get your fitness motivation back that really work!
- Go Over Your Goals
Start by taking a look at your goals and considering whether something needs to change. If you’ve lost your motivation it could be that you need a brand new goal and something to keep you going. Maybe your current goals simply need to be tweaked to appeal to where you’re at now. Take your time and decide what it is you’re looking to accomplish, and then solidify it by writing it down. It’ll help you to have some kind of notebook you use for this sort of thing, as having all of your fitness goals in your head can get overwhelming and you can easily lose focus.
2. Do It With A Friend
Getting back into it could be a lot easier if you do it with a friend. If your friend also wants to find their motivation then you can keep one another accountable. If they have motivation and you don’t, then theirs could rub off on you a little. You tend to become like the people you spend the most time with, so now is a really good time to spend with those who inspire you and motivate you.
3. Force Yourself To Get Active Early
This will be hard at first, but it could be an idea to force yourself to get active early on in the day. If you can force yourself to get up and just get your training done, you don’t have time to talk yourself out of it. If you think you’ll do it later in the day, you have plenty of time to come up with excuses not to do it. You will likely also lose motivation to get anything done as the day goes on. Working out or training early on can be a great way to get some energy for the rest of the day and feel good. Even if you commit to a short work out, it’ll make you feel better than nothing at all.
James Clear’s book, ‘Automic Habits’, states that at first it’s about building the habit. To do this, you don’t even need to do a full work out. You could simply walk into the gym and walk out again for a couple of weeks. Once you’re in the habit of going in the morning, you may as well start training! The habit is key to your success, so work on building that first.
4. Change Your Routine
If you do the same thing every time you train, it could be a good time to change your routine up and try something new. There are so many ways to train depending on what you like to do, so see if you can create a new plan for yourself or even pay for one. Having a new plan to train with could help to make you actually get up and want to go.
5. Find A Motivating Way To Track Your Progress
There are so many ways you can track your progress, but you really need to find a way to do it that resonates with you. There are apps you can download that will allow you to see your progress in graph or chart form, so you could try that if the idea of watching the chart go up motivates you. You can also take pictures, write out your weights, and do your measurements. Try to avoid weighing yourself, as this really doesn’t give you a good idea of how fit you are and could deter you from training if you feel it’s not changing.
6. Invest In Some Fitness Technology
There’s all kinds of fitness technology available these days, from simple fitness trackers to more complex watches. To start the hunt for your own bit of kit, you can check out this koretrak Review and begin to compare with others available. Nobody can really tell you which one is best for you – it all depends on your priorities. For example, if you prioritize your sleep, then you want one that has a really good sleep tracker. If you only really care about your steps, then you’ll want it to be as accurate as possible. The more athletic you endeavour to be, the more complex you’ll likely want the watch to be. Just don’t get caught up tracking the things that don’t really matter. When you’re trying to get your motivation back, the best thing you can usually do is focus on the basics.
7. Visualize Success
How you think about yourself and what you’re doing really can make the world of difference to your results. When you reframe things in your mind and begin to imagine yourself actually enjoying what you’re doing, you’ll be more likely to achieve your goals. Visualization is something many athletes and even entrepreneurs use with success. Be consistent with it and you could also see the benefits. You could start by watching a ‘mind movie’ to see how that works for you! Many people struggle to visualize at first, but it can be improved upon with regular practice.
8. Put On A Motivating Playlist
A motivating playlist can absolutely change your mood, especially if you use it in conjunction with some of the other tips here. Make a new playlist full of songs that make you want to get moving and see if you can get pumped up that way.
9. Don’t Overpromise
When you’re getting back into things, you really don’t want to make grand promises to yourself that you’re going to struggle to keep and then beat yourself up over. Instead of saying you’re going to jump right back into training 5 times a week, try to do 3 instead. Even 2 a week is better than nothing, but you may struggle to build a habit this way. Simply staying active is the best you can do sometimes, so if you can’t train, just go for a walk. As long as you’re not sitting around all day, you’re winning!
10. Consider Doing Something Out Of The Ordinary
How about shaking things up by doing something totally out of the ordinary for you? This could be a class you’d never look twice at, for example. Go to a dance class a few times and have a laugh, or do something else that looks funny. At the very least, this could help you get used to moving your body again and you might find the motivation to go back to what you’re really good at.
11. Sign Up To A Challenge
Signing up to a challenge could be just what you need – why not sign up to a race, a charity fight, or something else? Challenges won’t be for everybody, but participating in one could give you the motivation necessary to keep on training and working on your technique.
12. Give Yourself A Reward
When you give yourself a smart reward, you’ll be more likely to want to do the thing that helped you to get it. You could reward yourself with a smoothie, an episode of your favorite series, or another healthy idea. Doing this (and having the discipline to do it right) creates a loop within your brain that makes you feel good and want to repeat the process.
13. Don’t Make it About The Way You Look
Making your health and fitness goals all about the way you look is a quick way to fall ‘off the wagon’ and lose your motivation all over again. While looking good can be a great side effect of regularly training, it shouldn’t be the main reason you do it. Think of all of the fantastic physical and mental health benefits, and pay attention to how you feel after you’ve trained. Tracking your strength and things other than your appearance can be great motivators, so try this and see whether your motivation sticks around for longer this time.
Try some of the ideas above and see if you can get your fitness motivation back once and for all. Remember, everybody hits a wall every once in a while, and everybody goes through periods of low motivation. Don’t beat yourself up about it or you’ll feel worse! Simply work on making small changes and soon, you should be enjoying your training and feeling healthy again. Thanks for reading!