Motivation comes and goes, habits stay the course.
When motivation is lacking it’s easy to look at your gym membership coming out of your account each month and think “why am I paying for something I’m not using?”
You should also question these..
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Your ability to spend £50 on a deliveroo every week rather than prepare a meal of your own.
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Spending £100 on a night out that writes your Sunday off?
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The daily coffee, donut or bagel on your walk that actually add’s up to around £20/week (£80pcm)
Your cost of health care should outweigh the cost of sugar, alcohol & fast food but it often doesn’t and that is one of the biggest reasons you stay in an unmotivated state.
You need to change your thinking and you need to change it now, motivation is a consequence of taking action.
Until you can understand that, you will always struggle with motivation.
The love for exercise is not the exercise itself, it is the feeling after, the camaraderie built with others during that can only be noticed or measured after or the physiological results of exercising. Everything gym goers love about ‘exercising’ has nothing to do with the exercise itself in fact, most people who regularly exercise whether they CrossFit, powerlift, Run or Hike would probably enjoy any physical activity just as much as long as it contained those factors listed above.
Common feelings prior to exercise, more specifically CrossFit are often anxiousness , nervousness, feeling nauseous along with a little dash of excitement. Enough to put anyone off attending, give yourself a break.
HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED
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Take Action : Get a calendar and write in big capital letters SOLV ONLINE WORKOUT at a time you can commit to every single day of the week. When you turn up for the session highlight it in green. If you skip it simply highlight it in red. Most people think this is babyish, you’re an adult you don’t need to highlight things with green for good and red for bad. Oh but you do. You need to put your ego down and start in the most basic way you can because you’re failing right now and you’re tired of failing and you want to understand the missing ingredient to your troubles! A calendar is accountability, green is for praise which is proven to reinforce habit and red is for failed, not good enough, try again, turn it around. You need the praise and you need to visual of failure.
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Wear work clothes during the day : It’s easy to whack the sweats on working from home, don’t do it. Dress like people can see you and leave your workout clothes on the side for your workout. Remember that feeling of coming home after school and taking your uniform off, how liberating it felt? I always found it weird when I turned up to a friends house at 6pm and they still had their uniform on like it was casual and acceptable. Changing your clothes signifies the end of the working day and into YOUR time!
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Thinking : Watch the film ‘About Time’ it’s one of my favourites. There is a scene where the main character lives each day as normal but then chooses to relive the entire day by heading back in time only this time, he decides to take notice of all the great things around him across his day. The result is that at the end of each of those days he is a completely different person to who his wife later on that evening. You have to teach yourself how to think more positively in your day. When you do, you’ll find going to the gym, cleaning your house, making food and choosing difficult tasks all the more easier.
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Action again : Just do it (Nike please don’t take legal action). There is a reason Nike chose that phrase, actions come first motivation comes last. Remember the feelings you feel after exercise, hold onto that and just get yourself to the gym. It’s as simple as going to the bar with your mates, you turn up and the bar tender will get you a drink, you turn up to our gym and the coach will get you fit. Just do it.
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Treat your membership like health insurance : Every physical skill or lack thereof is in some shape or form linked with a chronic disease. If you’ve never lifted weights or pursued strength then you can expect to be at higher risk of osteoporosis/arthritis later on in life. If you’ve never pursued cardiovascular health you can expect increase risk of cardiovascular diseases, if you’ve removed essential fats from the diet you can expect increased risk of dementia & alzhimers’s (diseases of the brain) and many other health irregularities. If you pursue fitness in all it’s forms (CrossFit) you’ll have a much better chance of a quality life throughout your life.
Last but not least.
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MAKE ROOM : Turn your living room into a home gym. Move the sofa out of the way and make a space in your house that makes it feel different to how it normally feels or is used for. If environment matters to you then make sure you’re doing everything you can to change it into what you need to be rather than complain about wanting to be in the gym. We are in lockdown and so you’re going to have to make some strange decisions. If you’re other half doesn’t want you to move things around try this statement. “I’m trying to make a positive impact on my health for the benefit of you and all of our loved ones around us. I would really appreciate it if you could support my decision to be a healthier version of who I am now.”
