Are you struggling with exercise motivation and have all sorts of fitness inspiration questions like …
How to stay motivated for a workout? How to convince yourself to workout? How to find motivation to exercise when tired or even if you want to force yourself workout, then post is not something to missed by you.
I think everybody agrees on this…the hardest part is getting started. These tips will help you get off the couch and cue up a workout or head to the gym.
But after reading this post, this workout motivation should not be a problem now because here are the best fitness motivational tips & strategies that would easily convince you to start a fitness routine and stick by it forever.
So, without further ado, let’s dive and find those golden nuggets of workout motivation advice for you.
Best Fitness motivation tips & strategies
The following are some of the best fitness motivation tips & strategies you need to employ to get your ass up and moving in the gym.
1. Understand that your fitness is a journey, not a destination
The first secret of getting your fitness motivation and getting off your comfy sofa is to think of your fitness and exercising routine as your journey, not your final destination.
Your destination is a great healthy body but to get that healthy and fit body, you don’t have to stop anywhere, rather you have to keep moving to keep that healthy body intact.
If stop there, and think that you have reached your destination, your health and fitness will begin to deteriorate and all your energy spent on that journey will be lost. In other words, it is a marathon, not a sprint.
Since this journey is like a Marathon race, if you run too fast, you will become tired and get exhausted too quickly and will lose. Similarly, if you stop for a rest, you will lose again too.
In real terms, if you are too focused on quick gains, which are not possible in case of your body fitness, you will lose your patience and get frustrated, lose motivation confidence.
Instead, if you just think of smaller goals like finishing off your next set of exercises, eating a healthy meal and completing your exercise days, you will surely set up yourself for that long term amazing health and fitness.
So the best choice for you is to keep moving, slowly, steadily but surely.
2. Get an enthusiastic fitness lover partner
This is another oft-ignored secret of achieving your fitness and health success. I am sure you have heard that says “ birds of a feather flock together. ”
When you have a trusted fitness partner to join your journey, it works as a check on your progress towards your destination.
The most beautiful thing about this is that this friendship often develops into a competitive and productive rivalry that alone is a driver of your motivation for working out in the gym.
Remind yourself, how often you and your friend have been to an exercise and one of you said, I will do this set quickly than you and you tried your best to not let him do so or do your faster than him.
Or even when you both were strolling around the park, you just have a little sprint competition and he won but challenged to beat him the next time they meet here again.
This is how it can work again in your gym too. The best thing about it is that even if one of you is trying to be lethargic and bunking his daily exercise routine, the one who is going to the gym can come to your home and push you for the gym.
This is way better than lying alone in the house with no one to drive you towards your gym and you happily skip a couple of gym sessions which takes a toll on your fitness and overall health.
3. Take baby steps and don’t make big commitments
Choosing overwhelming and over-ambitious goals is another important roadblock in the path of many fitness lovers. While it is important to think big and ahead but setting high standards of achievement from the very start is a path of failure.
Rather, setting small goals and taking baby steps are the real momentum and confidence builders.
It is okay to become 30% in your first month. It is okay to become 50% of your desired level by 3 months.
It is even better to be at 80% by the end of your first six months. But the thing that matters is going steadily but surely.
Some examples of doable, achievable and confidence builder goals are like this
- I will lose that ugly 5 pounds of belly fat by the next 2 months
- I want to be able to lift that 15 kg of dumbbell by the next 3 months
- I will do 100 minutes of cardio by the end of this week.
- I want to be able to run for a continuous 30 minutes by next month.
Clearly, these little bite-sized goals look more achievable and confidence boosters than planning to lose 30 pounds of your body weight by the next 30 days which is a surefire recipe for failure.
4. Plan it out for the whole week
Planning your fitness routine for the whole next week can save from many problems and contribute towards your building regular habits and staying consistent no matter what.
Also, scheduling for a week creates those mini commitments and goals that are crucial for you to stay motivated and confident. The biggest plus of this habit of planning is that you, in fact, prioritize your fitness goals over other ones.
In other words, instead of your daily life routine as a whole running your affairs, you compel your life to work around those training and exercise hours. So, if you strictly abide by it, you would never lose track of your journey toward the destination of a healthy and fit life.
5. Always keep your things prepared and planned
Think about it…
You have just come home tired after a hectic day at the office and find yourself running short on time to take some time out for the fitness and training routine but can’t find your hiding-somewhere-joggers?
Or you are unable to find the tea shirt of your gym trousers, which makes to cringe and frustrated at the same time? What will you in this case?
Obviously lose your zeal for your gym session and you will say to yourself, “Now since I am unable to find my joggers and hence I can’t go the gym, why not watch a season of “friends” on Netflix?” Clearly, this is a natural behavior and everyone will do this. Even I would do this.
That’s why getting your accessories ready for the gym or training comes into play. Finding your shoes, clothes and a bottle of water in its place will boost your chances of paying a regular visit to your gym instead of bunking out and reclining on your sofa and watching an episode of your favorite season.
The same planning is valid for getting your meals of the week planned and cooked at the weekends so that you don’t lose your healthy motivation when you can’t find your favorite dish in the freezer.
So, to take the frustration and laziness out of your demotivation due to your inability to find your belongings when you return home, leave everything ready and available as you leave for your office.
Believe in my words, try this and witness your life and fitness motivation growing strong and comfortable.
6. Incentivize your fitness hard work with rewards
What if your government promises you that a monthly fitness assessment will be taken and those who are fit enough to run for continuous 30 minutes will be rewarded with a cash prize of 1000 $?
What will happen then? I am sure all the parks in your city would be full of people running here and there both in the mornings and evenings? This is human nature because humans always respond to incentives. In fact, a study by mayo clinic actually witnesses this in reality in an experiment.
Research study:
One Mayo Clinic weight loss study divided the participants of the study into two separate groups which lasted for one whole year.
One of the groups working as a controlled group was supposed to either pay or receive 20$ in cash by getting their monthly weight loss goals assessed. The other group simply carried out their normal monthly workouts but didn’t receive anything.
The result?
By the end of a year-long study, the group which either paid or received 20$ for their weight loss efforts lost a good amount of 9.1 pounds of weight on average, while the non-incentivized group lost merely 2.6 pounds of weight on average.
What is even more interesting is that those participants who received or gave cash for their performance, almost 62% of them were motivated enough to complete a year-long study while the participants of the non-incentivized group were only 26% in total at the end.
Now the big question is how can you include rewards in your fitness goals? Good question!
There are a lot of ways you can do this. As you already know, aim and achieving smaller goals are important for the success of your fitness journey. So you can start to reward these small goals upon their completion.
For example,
When you fulfill your commitment to lose 5 pounds of weight by the end of the month, you can take yourself on a day-long trip to your favorite resort. Or you can take yourself to watch your favorite newly released movie or show.
However, you should exercise caution that your goal should be a healthy and refreshing one, not the one which undoes the hard work you have done on your fitness. e.g finishing off three bottles of alcohol which fill you with harmful and empty calories that can be a roadblock to your fitness goals like weight loss.
Note: Programs like Healthy Wage are very good examples of competing with yourself to lose a certain amount of weight in a given timeframe.
7. Flashback your positive fitness memories
You are in the gym, but can’t do a couple of more bench presses? Flashback to your college days, when you were fit enough to cross that winning line in a marathon and won your first prize of the college?
I am sure after recollecting your good old memories, you will be able to do your couple of bench presses. But this is not just about good experience rather modern research has proven this too.
According to a recent study,
Reflecting and flashing back your winning moments and memories can actually push you to be more energetic with renewed zeal.
On the other hand, recalling some of your forgettable moments like losing your weight lifting competition can discourage you from doing an extra rep of your bench presses.
Or else, listening to good motivation music during your workouts can also go a long way in keeping you interested in your workout session.
8. Make your smartphone your fitness tracker
You don’t need to have a physical trainer to keep your fitness activities in check rather in modern days, your smartphone can do all the crucial jobs you need like tracking your weight, tracking your calories and tracking your bodybuilding progress.
There are many useful apps, online fitness trackers, and different food journals that can do that for you right from your smartphone or through your connection to the internet. You just have to know how to do this.
For instance, whenever you worry about how many calories there are in your pasta, remember that there is an app to that for you which can simply be accessed by downloading it.
Or you need to figure out how many calories you need to eat daily to lose that stubborn 10 pounds of fat, there is an app for that.
For example, an app like Happify involves you in activities that create happiness in research-based science. And there is an app like Lift, which can help you find a real-life trainer or coach who is ready to help you out in your fitness motivation problems.
Or else, one-time invest in some really good fitness trackers to keep every fitness moment in check and keep a cord of it.
9. Prioritize healthy fitness goals instead of apparent ones.
Ask yourself, do you want your body to be healthy or you want your body appears to be healthy and shining? If you chose the second option, it means you are missing an important trick in achieving your fitness goals.
In order to really motivated your fitness goals, you have to develop intrinsic motivation which makes you both physically and emotionally happy and confident.
You have to shun your extrinsic motivation to show your body to other people. For that, you have to stop training to be slimmer and develop good curves(if you are curves) to impress your other people or friends showing up on an annual college reunion.
Recent research studies have proved this reality too.
Researchers found that the women who were driven by their desire to improve their body image produced fewer results from their training routine than those who really wanted to go to the gym and get healthy and fit according to findings from this 2014 study.
10. Be active outside the gym too
No doubt, a sophisticated gym is an ultimate destination for realizing your fitness goals but a person searching for fitness motivation needs to be active outside the gym too.
For example, park your car at the furthest distance from your workplace at the parking lot. By doing this, you will be able to have a quick run while coming in and out of your workplace office.
Or while shopping in a shopping mall, instead of climbing up through the stairs elevator, try running up physically to give you a sort of warmup that can, in some cases, save your time to do warm-ups at the gym and instead go straight into the business of lifting those heavy weights aimed at building muscles.
Or instead of getting everything cleaned up through a vacuum cleaner in your room, make an effort yourself to lift it up by your hands give you a nice workout for your core and legs muscles.
11. Figure out your own fitness ways and routine
Following a fitness routine and progression designed by a gym trainer can be a source of fitness demotivation too.
When you work on and follow the stipulated steps of an exercise, you are more prone to lose track and direction which can cause you to throw your dumbbells and listen to music and come out of the gym.
A good solution: master all the workouts yourself and choose your own routine and order of the progression of an exercise.
Recent research in Psychology of Sport and Exercise has confirmed it too.
It found out that when participants were free to choose the steps and routines of a workout, not only it motivated those participants to do more of that exercise but they were more engaged and happy to finish it off.
If you don’t want to lose that hard-gained motivation in fitness, then you have to step forward, learn and master those moves by yourself and don’t merely rely on those boring steps taught by that youtube fitness video or your gym instructor.
12. Get a gym in your home.
This is really the biggest of all secrets to driving your unwavering motivation for fitness. Think about yourself, how many times you feel uncomfortable to drive 6 miles to reach your nearest gym to do some bench presses? Of course, many times.
A much better choice for you is that instead of making daily rounds of your gym, save some money and buy all the necessary equipment by yourself to save yours from daily hassles. If you can’t buy all at once, you can buy one by one.
I am sure that your willingness and frequency to do regular workouts will increase manifold because you would be able to save the extra time and energy spent on driving away to reach out to your gym.
Try doing this and thank me later.
13. Get your treadmill out in the open
A treadmill lying in a closed room is not the best type of motivation to run a few miles on the treadmill. What if you could take that to an open-air area, like your roof where you could witness lush greenery around your house?
14. Get a new kit for your gym training
Can you recall your childhood when your mom brought you a new exercise kit and you were very keen to wait for the next day to wear on that new kit and do your evening session? The psychology of humans remains the same whether they are young or old.
By buying a new pair of shoes and a brand new tea shirt and trousers can keep you attending your gym for at least a couple of weeks until you become committed to yourself to certain fitness goals.
