HOW TO STAY MOTIVATED: 15 YEARS OF TRAINING
The first step in consistent training, achieving results and hitting the gym for over a decade, is removing the word motivation from our vocabulary. The true title of this blog should be “How to prioritize long term health when life get’s inconvenient”.
I have been training in the gym since I was 15 years old. The only “break” I have taken from the gym was a three week trip to Thailand when I was 23. Even throughout my pregnancy I was training 3-5x per week up until my 40th week. Of course, I love training and being in the gym, which is why I made it my full time career.
When I was creating the original plans for Jolt, I relied on my experience of being in the industry both as a participant and trainer for over a decade. I had worked at many different styles of gym’s including big box, non for profit, franchises and small local boutiques. I had exercised in gyms for over a decade and been mislead, injured and intimidated. I had also had amazing experiences where I built my athletic career, made life-long friends, and built a resilient body and mind. I took all my experiences both the amazing and the awful to create a space where our Jolt Fam community could thrive for a life time. My goal for the Jolt Fitness community is to create a space where all people can feel supported in life-long health and resiliency.
Life long health and resiliency does not mean perfect gym attendance, motivation, and a never ending supply of energy. It doesn’t mean “team no days off” and I am not dry scooping pre-workout just to get through my daily Lift session. Rather, consistent training for over a decade looks like realistic expectations of myself and my goals, relying on mostly intrinsic motivation and choosing activities that I love and leave me feeling better than when I walked in.
Fifteen years of dedicated training is just the beginning for me, here’s how I got there:
REALISTIC EXPECTATIONS
Training comes in waves and phases. There’s times when I am unstoppable, in the rhythm, and every workout feels like 100% effort towards my goals. There’s other times when I am dragging my feet into the gym, going through the motions, and simply putting in the time. Sometimes these phases are a few days and sometimes they last months. Ultimately one thing is for certain, I show up. I manage my expectations that not every Lift has to be a step towards a big goal. Sometimes training is simply showing up and being around a supportive community and remembering all the benefits the gym brings me whether I hit a PR (personal record) or not. It’s important to me during the phases of “low motivation” that I prioritize my long term health and know that every Lift session is a drop in the bucket of resilient and high quality life. To me that means:
Having the energy to keep up to my growing family and showing my kids what active hobbies look like (hockey, rollerblading, gym, etc)
Leading by example in taking care of my own health, so that our community as a whole can become healthier and happier
Maintaining what I have worked so hard to build physically
Building mental resiliency to show up when life get’s uncomfortable and creating discomfort in a comfort driven world
To be an active grandparent some day
To live on my own with independence as long as possible
2. INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
The hardest part about quitting is re-starting. And re-starting is not optional. Whether we like it or not, fitness is a daily health practice like brushing our teeth and taking a shower. We don’t think “hmmm, I am not motivated to brush my teeth lately and throw the tooth brush away”. Instead we realize that taking care of ourselves is a human responsibility and having good oral hygiene is necessary. When I feel “un-motivated” I don’t quit, take a break, or look for the next best toothbrush on the shelf to inspire me to oral hygiene greatness. I focus on intrinsic motivators like stress relief, mental health and clarity, living with independence long term, living with integrity, overcoming challenges, increased energy, an hour of my day that can’t be interrupted by the outside world.
Often people who find themselves in a vicious cycle of quitting and re-starting rely on external motivation:
Signing up for marathons, races or fitness challenges (of any category like running, weight lifting, weight loss, etc.)
A singular focus like wanting to fit into old jeans or a certain number on the scale
Doing it for someone else’s approval
Always chasing the next best fitness trend or fad
Next time you feel like taking a break from your life-long consistent fitness routine, instead of thinking “this is not working”, try thinking “how can I shift my focus”. Aim to find multiple progress measures and some may be extrinsic, but also intrinsic too. How does regularly practicing fitness make me feel in this lifetime right now and ten, twenty and thirty years from now?
3. CHOOSE AN ACTIVITY YOU LOVE*
One of the roles of a personal trainer is to create the perfect plan for each individual client. It’s my responsibility to take all the ingredients of your life (where you work and live, your stress levels, responsibilities, nutrition, activity level, sleep patterns, schedule and other hobbies) and make the best recipe for health and fitness. I can prescribe the exact amount of reps, sets, and steps for you to achieve your goals. I can hand over the most gourmet pancake recipe you have ever seen, but if you don’t like pancakes then chances are you’re not going to follow through on my recipe for success. When it comes to fitness, we’re going to be doing it our entire lives. If the activity we choose to do makes us miserable then it’s going to be really hard to stick with it for decades.
You can see I have put an asterisks* on this one. Love is a strong word, we love our children, but that doesn’t mean every single thing they do is wonderful (like that tantrum in the grocery store). When it comes to choosing our activities, we need to look at BOTH what is the best choice for me long term and what do I enjoy doing. We may be challenged in certain elements of our programming (hello Turkish Get Ups), but the word “hate” and being “challenged” are very different. Showing up and doing the hard work, overcoming challenges and facing adversity builds character and is an important part of our healthy and resilient lifestyle. So yes of course, there needs to be some wiggle room for the word “enjoy” on day’s that are hard, but for the most part we should not absolutely dread our daily fitness routine.
Finding a coach and community that you trust, enjoy spending time with, and you leave feeling better than when you walked in is key to fitness success long term. You need to know that you can trust in their guidance and education to build you up and live your most resilient life just like you trust hair dressers to cut your hair, dentists to fill your cavities and mechanics to fix your car. Finding a space that is positive, clean and separate from your other life responsibilities will create an environment where you can thrive.
It truly breaks my heart when people fall out of their fitness routine entirely. I opened the doors at Jolt, so that our community could become healthier, happier and build their best life outside our gym doors. The state of our community’s health is truly something I care about and believe can be better. There’s been so much suffering the last few years, and I do believe fitness is part of the solution. I want our youth to be active and happy, our mom’s to find support throughout change, our business owners to have stress relief, our athletes to push themselves beyond their own beliefs, our families to have a place of commonality, our friends to have social time and shared values, and our seniors to feel confident living independently. We don’t just welcome you to our space on your best days or in your “thriving era”, but also on the days that are hard, the phases that challenge you and the events that almost break you. Our mission is to ensure that everyone who walks into Jolt Fitness has the opportunity to build their resilient body and live a high quality life.
Having a consistent fitness routine changed my life in so many positive ways and I can’t stress enough the importance of it as part of my lifestyle. If you’re sick of re-starting and drowning in the deep end of a negative life, and living a life of resiliency and quality interests you - then join us for a fitness experience that will change your life and lasts a lifetime!
