Why You Shouldn’t Rely on Motivation to Workout

First things first. Motivation is AWESOME!! It makes you feel like you’re superman (or insert your favorite super hero here). It makes it easy to get things done and it makes it way easier to get our butt moving and workout. I mean, how many of us were ready to join Karate after seeing the Karate Kid?! (Or Cobra Kai for our younger readers). How many of us were ready to run through a brick wall after the famous speech in Miracle?? Or how about run up a flight of stairs when we hear the Rocky soundtrack!? I know I was! So if motivation is so awesome why can’t we rely on it to achieve our training goals? 

Well unfortunately, just like our Central New York summers, motivation is sporadic, unpredictable and short lived. And when it comes to achieving our fitness goals we need the opposite. We need consistency over long periods of time to be successful. So we can absolutely use motivation to help us when it comes around, but we can’t rely on it to get to the end goal. None of us have time to watch a full Rocky movie every morning to start our day (I would choose Rocky IV). So what’s the solution?

When motivation is high, we get our workout done. When motivation is low, we fall back into our habits. The key is to have implemented good, strong habits that have been designed to get us to our goal. How do we implement good workout habits? Apply James Clear’s Atomic Habits laws to working out. I can always be contacted for additional support. But who knows, Goodfellas just came on tv so maybe I will have been motivated to join the mob by tonight!

You got this!
– Nick