Motivation Techniques for Gaining and Maintaining Good Health

By Idai Makaya

Regardless of what sport or exercise routine you may wish to participate in, you will fail to reach your goals and your true potential if you are unable to motivate yourself consistently for long periods of your life.

I believe it is futile embarking on an exercise program without putting it into the context of your whole life. Considering that when done wrongly, exercise could result in permanent injury or disability over the long term, it’s important that anyone who starts to exercise makes sure they are fully aware of what they are trying to achieve, how best to do it and the pitfalls they may meet along the way.

I also believe that exercise regimes are about lifestyle change or modification and should always be viewed with a long term vision. If you plan to exercise for just a few months and then stop, don’t even bother going through with it. It is really just a waste of your time. Exercise only has benefits when done consistently over very long proportions of your life. It is never too late to start exercising to improve your health.

Exercise should be viewed as one of your daily chores, such as brushing your teeth, taking a bath or shower and indeed, having a healthy meal. When viewed in that context, the motivational techniques for sustaining a life-long habit of exercising become a lot more obvious.

For instance, consider the motivations one has for having a bath or taking a shower. They are actually quite similar to those we have for exercising.

• Consider the positives of the activity. What do you gain from doing it
• Consider the consequences of not doing it
• Consider the fact that it can be turned into a relatively pleasant daily experience
• Always remember to prioritise it and have a place set aside for it every single day because it is important enough

What else can we do to make sure we exercise regularly?

• Get it done first – Exercising early in the morning before the day really gets moving can be a great way to ensure it always gets done without distractions. This also gives you the added advantage of an early start to your day. Starting the day early has a wide range of benefits to personal and professional life, including the fact that you get to have a longer day in which to get everything else done that needs doing.
• Tell as many people about your exercise goals and routines as you can. This puts added pressure on you to follow through with your resolution to exercise/train, especially on those days when your motivation is flagging.
• Include a sport in your exercise routine to give you that added impetus to train. For instance, becoming a long distance runner, joining a running club and committing yourself to train for a specific race or marathon is an excellent way to ensure you do the required training to lose weight - if you have a weight problem and want to use running as a way of reducing your weight.
• Join an exercise group, club, or a sports team to ensure you have lots of other people around you with similar goals who will help sustain your motivation.

• Try to do something you actually enjoy - or if you cannot possibly enjoy exercising but realise you have to do it, find the least dreadful activity you can as a means of ensuring you are less likely to lose motivation. This may sound silly, but not a lot of people actually enjoy exercising, and everyone that exercises regularly goes through phases when they really do not find it enjoyable at all. This does not mean they stop, this is when they have to turn to successful motivational strategies to keep them going until they can get excited about it again. I fall into that category that doesn’t particularly enjoy exercise because I have done it for most of my life so it just doesn’t seem exiting at all for me – and hasn’t for years. However, the benefits of exercising and other motivators keep me going. And some of these motivators are listed here.
• Change the way you exercise when it loses its lustre for you. Changing sports and exercise regimes is inevitable as life goes on. After a number of years one will lose interest in doing the same thing over and over without variety. A change, whether it is short term, long term or just additional, can be a great way of recharging your enthusiasm.
• Change the times you exercise to make the routines more lively. Studies show that just mixing up the scheduling of routines seems to make them more refreshing for people.
• Change the volume of exercise you do. If you exercise 5 or 6 days a week, try reducing that to 2 or 3 times for a period of, say, between one and three months. The reduced volume will help raise your energy levels and will also get you to look forward to your training more than previously. Alternatively, you may want to change the length of sessions, not the number. So if you normally train for an hour, try changing that to 30 minutes for a period.
• Take a short break. A one week enforced break from exercise works wonders for high-level trainees and brings back enthusiasm.

• If you are beginning an exercise program, work well within your capacity. Do not try to challenge yourself. Pushing hard may initially seem rewarding, but after a few weeks overtraining results, which normally presents as a sudden lack of enthusiasm, a sudden list of excuses for not training, and missed training sessions - usually leading to a total cessation of training, eventually. Instead, go out slowly, you have your whole life to get into shape. Increases in intensity will occur naturally - or should be phased in very conservatively - under a strict guide. For instance, if you run, always run distances shorter than your maximum ability, initially. Always train within your capacity. Training is meant to be conservative. If you start weight training, only work with 50% of your actual maximum weight that you can lift initially. Then increase in small weekly or monthly increments, after about a month of acclimatisation at one intensity of training.
• Use sporting events as training goals if you are the sort of person that needs that competitive sort of motivation, for instance, running a marathon, competing in a tournament, etc.

If you are interested in discussing other motivational techniques please contact Idai.