How to Stay Motivated When You Don't Feel Like Training
We all experience dips in motivation from time to time, but we all differ in our response to the lack of enthusiasm. It's easy to get sucked into a routine of bailing on classes, making excuses and feeling sorry for yourself. However, once you're stuck in this rut, it's difficult to break out. Here are four things you can do to get your motivation back:
1. Set Achievable Goals
Setting unrealistic targets is one reason people lose motivation and passion for training. That isn't to say you shouldn't dream big, or set your sights high, far from it. We all need a big goal to push us forward and achieve big things - not just in training, but in all aspects of life. Instead, break your big goal down into smaller, achievable chunks.
If your goal is to compete at the CrossFit Games, but you've never competed before, it's unlikely you're going to achieve your goal in the immediate future. Instead, you need targets you can tick off in the next couple of months, giving you something to celebrate and drive you on to the next one.
After each goal's complete, you should reflect on how you did, re-assess your big goal, and tweak as necessary.
2. Train in a Group Environment
If you find yourself skipping sessions, or wandering aimlessly around the gym, get yourself booked into the next group class! Training with others is motivating - even if you're not a competitive person by nature, you have other people to be accountable to.
Make the most of the box community - commit to a set number of sessions each week, and arrange to be in the same classes as your pals. This is exactly what Chloe did when she found she'd lost her passion for training - find out more about how it helped her in this post.
3. Remember Why You're Doing It
For most of us, there's an underlying reason to train. Are you overweight and worried about your health? Do you want to run around with your kids without getting out of breath? Do you just want to look good, or feel fit and strong?
It doesn't matter whether your reasons are deep and meaningful, or what others may perceive to be trivial, they're important to you - and you need to remember them when you start to lose your motivation.
It can also be useful to think of the consequences if you don't train. Whilst missing a session or two isn't likely to impact you too much, but doing it regularly could put you right back to where you started, and prevent you from achieving your goals.
4. Learn How to Be Accountable
When you make a habit of blaming everything and everyone else for your lack of training, it will become difficult for you to find the motivation internally.
Take control of your own life, and be accountable for your actions. YOU are responsible for those missed sessions, and YOU are responsible for the results (or lack of) that happen as a consequence.
There will be times you miss a session through no fault of your own: maybe you'll have to work late unexpectedly, or you might decide you need an extra day to recover from your last session. However, if this is happening on a regular basis, you need to step back and evaluate why. If you're trying to do too much, adapt your training schedule to fit with your current lifestyle.
Have you been struggling with motivation lately?
What do you do to get back in the zone?
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