Stay Motivated When You Exercise

Have you ever been in the situation where you are working out, 10 minutes in you start to experience negative feelings, thoughts enter your head such as ‘Why am I doing this?’, ‘What am I going to achieve’, ‘I might as well just go home’. As a Personal Trainer in Llanelli I know that this is an absolutely crucial time not just during your session but for your future development.

This is where motivation plays a vital role, motivation determines how we act in everyday life. Motivation to work towards a new job or simply the motivation to get out of bed in the morning, motivation plays a huge part of our life. In exercise terms motivation is so important, without it not many people would even train.

So I am going to help you out today and give you some helpful tips to make sure you maintain motivation while you exercise:

1. Enjoyment – After successfully completing an exercise sessions the positive feelings are up there with the best, you get an enormous feeling of self achievement which can last for the whole day, the people who exercise know this. For the people who don’t exercise can be viewed as a painful, hard and boring experience. It is hard it can be painful but don’t make it boring, for those of you looking to lose weight or those who would like to enjoy exercise avoid the same old long boring run, mix it up work at different intensities, a high intensity interval training will do a lot more than a steady speed 30 minute run! Same goes to those of you who workout at the gym, please don’t do the same session every day, when I go to the gym I see so many people coming in same time each day and doing the exact same session, it actually frustrates me! Eventually you will hit a plateau where the good results stop! You can vary your exercises, there are countless number of machines working different body parts, better than that there are free weights which you can do literally 100s of exercises with.

2. Tune Your Mindset – Many people when they exercise will just think ‘this is too tough... only ten minutes left’ How about you forget those feelings and think about how you will feel afterwards. I may be sad but I honestly believe that not many feelings beat how you feel mentally after a gruelling sessions followed by a nice shower! Focus on the positives and this should motivate you to finish the session and move a step closer to reaching your goals.

3. Bring A Friend – Start to associate yourself with the people who are trying to make a positive change to their life through exercise, spending too much time with negative people can have a negative effect on you, stay away from the people who think it’s okay to go for a McDonalds after the gym because they think they deserve it! Exercising is a great way of meeting like minded individuals, why not meet up with the people from your gm to go for a run or a cycle one night a week, it’s a lot easier to say no to yourself than to yourself and a friend. You can get your own little workout just by taking your kids down the park for a game of football.

4. Hire A Personal Trainer – Training by yourself is great, you get the freedom of being able to train when you want, without waiting for anyone else. On the other hand when you train alone it can be very easy for negative emotions to take over if you aren’t motivated enough which will lead you to miss sessions. If you know you have a personal training session coming up it is a lot harder to miss when you know you are letting them down as well ... personal trainers also help to motivate you during the sessions and ensure you give it your all!

5. Treat Yourself– Book yourself in for a relaxing massage for when you have finished your session, this will give you something to look forward to. Or even tell yourself if you exercise 5 days this week you can buy yourself a new pair of trainers, simple things like this will give you something to focus on.

6. Beats – I am one of those people who struggle to exercise while I’m in the gym or on a run without music. I find it helps so much, I would recommend getting a playlist for your ipod/mp3 player with fast upbeat music on! It can really help you when you are on your last legs so to speak.

The difference between the impossible and the possible lies in a person's determination.

Jamie Stedman