Motivation for sports and training: motivating ourselves correctly

“Do you want to be better than the rest? Then you have to do what others don’t want to do.” - Michael Fred Phelps II, American swimmer, the only 23-time Olympic champion in the history of sports.

Motivation is a psychophysiological process that manifests itself in the form of a desire or need that encourages or forces a person to act, and sometimes to decide on inaction. Motivation for sports is part of sports psychology. She helps professional athletes achieve the highest results. For others, it is a sort of “psychological crutch” that first helps them get started, and then prevents them from giving up their chosen sport.

Set a goal

Why do people start doing this or that sport or physical activity? The point is a goal, the formation of which is influenced by gender, age, natural physical data, health status, a person’s environment, his financial capabilities, sports infrastructure and (even!!!) the current state policy regarding mass and elite sports.

The list of sports motivations is quite long. It includes motivations:

become a champion;
acquire the necessary skills;
get rid of excess weight;
become the owner of a beautiful body;
develop or improve physical performance;
overcome psychological complexes;
prevent, cure or recover from illness or injury;
lead a healthy lifestyle (HLS), live longer and better;
be in trend and comply with fashion trends;
expand your social circle.

The listed goals are not isolated and, as a rule, are presented in combinations. Moreover, most of them have a subconscious initial motive - increasing self-esteem. And sport really enhances it.

Which sport do you prefer?

What is the best motivation for sports? As can be seen from the above, there is no best and only one. But almost any motivation will lead to success if, in order to achieve a set and conscious goal, laziness and bad habits are overcome, one or more sports are adequately selected, and an experienced coach (instructor) conducts classes or gives consultations.

When choosing the type of physical activity, apply the principle: the goal determines the means. For example:

Need sculpted muscles? In addition to strength training in the gym, under the guidance of a competent instructor, whether you like it or not, you will need to run and change your eating behavior.
Losing weight is necessary, but you can’t do it, is your weight constantly fluctuating? Look for a good fitness trainer and registered nutritionist with positive word of mouth reviews.
Does your heart hurt, do your legs hurt? Start with regular walking and then running with Nordic poles. Don't forget to limit your salt intake and normalize your drinking balance.

How to stay motivated

When you first start working out in a fitness club, gym or doing exercises at home, you are full of enthusiasm and look forward to your sports future. Unfortunately, this mood does not last long, and the desire to practice gradually fades away.

Staying motivated to do sports and fitness isn't easy, but it can be done. Follow these simple recommendations and have fun.

Set a goal

Answer yourself the question: why do I want to play sports? If your goal is to lose weight, don't be shy to admit it to yourself. Calculate how many times a week you need to exercise, and try not to skip workouts.

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Don't expect too much from yourself

The easiest way to lose motivation is to not get the results you want. But remember that if you are not a professional athlete, you will not be able to achieve quick results, and this is absolutely normal. Training and exercise are more of a way of life; they require regularity and consistency. Regardless of what goal you are pursuing, you must wait at least a month for the first significant results to appear.

Enjoy

Create a workout program that you enjoy. If you don't like lifting weights, eliminate these exercises from your schedule. Don't like working out on the treadmill? So you don't need to do this. The best motivation for sports and fitness is a feeling of joy and satisfaction after a fruitful workout.

Remind yourself of the health benefits

On days when you're too tired and want to skip a workout, remember the benefits that exercise and exercise bring to your health. Not only do they get your body in great shape, but they also reduce your risk of heart disease and increase your life expectancy by up to five years.

Choosing a time for training

When choosing the time to work in the gym and planning an individual workout on the street or at home, consider the following recommendations:

To lose weight, you need to run before breakfast, and do fitness exercises in the afternoon or evening;
It is preferable to perform stretching and development of flexibility from 11:00 to 14:00;
fitness and strength exercises are best done from 16:00 to 20:00;
with proper nutrition, you can gain weight both in the morning and during the day, but preferably in the evening;
you can dry your muscles “from morning to evening”; the most important thing is to know how to do it correctly;
You should engage in health-improving cyclic exercises from 16:00 to 18:00;
yoga and oriental gymnastics will bring more benefits during sunrise and sunset.

Benefits of sports

We all know that sport is health, but for some reason not everyone does it. To be healthy, you don’t have to go to the gym and be a professional athlete; it’s enough just to do exercises in the morning and watch your diet.

Sport is:

Beautiful well-groomed body
Good health
Feeling good in old age
Self-discipline
A surge of strength
Feeling good

These are only the most superficial results of regular exercise. Without remembering the fact that sports activity gives health, prolongs youth and makes it possible to enjoy all aspects of life in its various facets.

I wrote about all the benefits of sports in my previous article.

Motivation for girls

Most young ladies and young women start doing fitness to:

become the owner of a slim, athletic figure;
put your body in order after childbirth;
look gorgeous, maintain the beauty of your body shape and be proud of it on social networks;
be in trend;
get rid of complexes;
satisfy the need for admiration and adoration;
meet men who take care of themselves;
spend money on sports shopping.

With the exception of the last point, it seems that all points are significant and weighty. However, there is one “but”. Psychologists have proven that the listed motivation for sports for girls, including a zealous desire to lose weight, in most cases causes the exact opposite of the desired effect.

Remember, success will come only to those who, wittingly or unwittingly, prioritize a motivational approach that is not related to sports, emotional needs and external appearance. Don’t fight with yourself, “walking in a vicious circle” and “fighting like a fish on ice.” Accept and love yourself for who you are. And you will see, after a while, laziness will disappear, willpower will appear and everything will definitely start to work out.

Motivation for guys

The main motivations of boys and men to start or resume sports are fundamentally different from women's. For example, no one plans to visit a gym to meet a fit girl or to look for a bodybuilder wife.

Motivation for sports for men is:

the decision to build a new body with strong and resilient muscles, including those dictated by status or professional needs;
the opportunity to improve your mood by throwing out negative emotions through muscle work or cardio exercise;
method of losing weight and/or maintaining physical condition;
forced receipt of the necessary physical activity (gradual decrease), due to leaving sports;
“everyone goes to bodybuilding, and I’m not weak”, “I need to go to the gym due to my status”;
a way to maintain health, prolong youth and longevity;
the desire to resume previously acquired or the opportunity to acquire new physical skills;
pleasant time with friends (game sports);
a valid reason for absence from family;
creating a positive example for children;
the only type of treatment that the doctor recommended.
The main method that will help the stronger sex start and not give up training is to analyze excuses and sincerely admit their inferiority.

How to start today and not finish tomorrow

Many people dream of always looking beautiful and being healthy. Such desires are absolutely normal. Most also know and understand that the easiest and surest way to achieve this goal is sports. However, for most people things do not go further than these very desires and knowledge. But why does this happen? The only problem lies solely in the people themselves and the internal attitudes that they give themselves.

Developing habits

To achieve any visible result, you need to exercise for at least half an hour every day. But what can we do? What if a person absolutely does not have an extra 30 minutes a day or physical activity during this time seems incredibly exhausting to him?

Often, in all sorts of instructions, sometimes even for beginners (!), it is written that you need to practice for as much as an hour and a half every day. But where do you get so much energy and time? Everything is much simpler than it might seem.

To begin any regular physical activity, it is enough to devote only 5-10 minutes a day to it. The main factor here is regularity. These light exercises, the level of regular exercise, will not help you achieve a Schwarzenegger figure or lose those extra pounds, but they will develop in your brain the main habit: exercise every day. And then, when you get used to it, perhaps half an hour will not seem so scary to you.

Read more: 10 tips to stay motivated all the time

“I can’t force myself!” – if such a thought arises, then you need to urgently get rid of it. We must try to overcome ourselves, to find something to do that will bring us joy. If running causes the blues to progress, then it is worth replacing it with something else. Yoga, karate, sports dancing, everyone can find an active activity that they will like. And music can serve as a good accompaniment for training.

“But why do I need all this?” – and such questions are already a sign of insufficient motivation. Usually they arise in the minds of people who already have everything in order with their health, who simply have nothing to complain about yet.

But there are many things that not everyone knows about and, perhaps, they are the ones that sometimes prevent you from starting to practice.

Exercising improves health and reduces the risk of many cardiovascular and other diseases. For example, people who exercise are much less susceptible to diabetes, strokes, cancer or arthritis.
It has long been known that any beneficial physical activity increases life expectancy. Just 10-20 minutes of exercise every day can increase your life by as much as 2-3 years!
Exercise promotes the production of joy hormones, thanks to which sport helps strengthen tone and maintain a good mood.
Due to the production of the above-mentioned hormones, a sports person exposes himself to less stress and tolerates it more easily.
Sport increases the body's endurance, which means a person will be able to endure much greater loads, which will certainly make his life brighter and more unforgettable.
Sports will also help keep your spirit and sometimes even your body young. We are all susceptible to aging, but regular exercise can prolong the time when a person feels young and fresh.

Aren't these good enough reasons to take up exercise right now?

Don't expect everything to work out right away. You need to wait patiently and practice and, over time, everything will go as it should. The main thing is not to give up halfway. Because even the greatest athletes started with defeats, which did not stop them from reaching the heights at which they are now.

Motivation for children

Creating a need or desire in a child to play sports is actually not difficult, even if we are talking about physical therapy. The only thing that parents who have not found the necessary ways of persuasion and force their children to engage in unloved sports must constantly remember is to forget about Olympic medals. True, exceptions are possible when positive attitudes are gradually instilled by a competent coach.

Of course, each age has its own “main” motivations, but the general list of techniques is approximately as follows:

choosing a sport that is pleasant and suitable for the child, and not for relatives;
assistance in classes - provision of uniforms and equipment, transportation to training, active empathy for the training and competitive process;
“creating” a sports idol, and in case of disappointment, selecting another candidate;
creating your own positive example;
joint exercises, outdoor games;
selection of motivational materials;
maintaining the desire to change sports.

Why don't you have motivation for sports?

Do you need to understand what is stopping you from training? Everyone is familiar with the most common reasons why we don't exercise. We are too busy, very tired, sports are boring and uninteresting, and so on. But are these reasons real? It's easy to tell ourselves it's been a hard day and not go to exercise, but the real reasons why we don't have the motivation to exercise go a little deeper.

We are not used to being active

For many people, a regular workout routine and exercise program is something they have never had to do before. Few people can quickly rearrange their schedule, and often this process causes stress, anxiety and even anger at oneself.

The life of a modern person does not require much movement

The modern world is sedentary - public transport will take you almost to your home, shopping centers have elevators and escalators, you don’t even have to go for food - it will be delivered directly to your apartment. For people who are not used to being physically active, there may be no reason to change this.

Exercise is too difficult

For many people, training in a gym or fitness club seems painful: running on a treadmill, constantly looking at the wall, a boring aerobics lesson, complex explanations from a trainer in which nothing is clear. As a result, one gets the impression that visiting the gym is something negative. It is not surprising that in this case, we have no motivation to exercise.

No consequences

What happens if you don't exercise? Usually nothing. At least not right away. Even knowing about the possible consequences, such as excess weight and health problems, is not enough to motivate us to be physically active.

Motivational music

Musical accompaniment increases the effectiveness of the lesson, creates the desired mood, supports or sets the necessary tempo-rhythm of movements. Modern gadgets allow you to create individual collections of tracks that can be considered a training plan.

Music for motivation for sports - rules:

For running and cyclical sports, select music at a tempo that will match your heart rate in your planned heart rate zone.
For individual fitness aerobics, dance, rock, pop, disco or marching music with a tempo of about 120 beats per minute is suitable.
For warming up, cooling down and stretching - from adagio to andante.
Powerlifters and bodybuilders sometimes prefer heavy metal, but any variation is possible.

Films about sports and motivation

Motivational materials: books, audiobooks, feature films (by the way, we recommend our selection of 10 motivational films about sports) - have a good effect on everyone. Documentary films about great athletes and motivational films about sports are interesting from adolescence. But we don’t recommend watching TV series about sports for either adults or children. There is absolutely no reliable information there.

Little kids can comment on comics appropriately: Do you want to be strong like Optimus Prime? Then let's start with daily exercise!