Everything is a question of will. Everything is a question of will. Everything is a question of will …
If you’ve ever done sports or are thinking of doing it, you probably already know that the hardest part at the start (and even afterwards) is to motivate yourself and stay constant over time.
If you really want to achieve your goals, it is not enough to be motivated once a month, or once a week. It’s an everyday job, even if you don’t train every day. Indeed it is well known that physical activity is inseparable from a balanced diet and a repected rest time.
But how do you motivate yourself to play sports?
To answer quickly: everything is in the head! We will see together in this article 7 tips to make our naturally lazy mind accept the unbearable idea of playing sports.
1. Find a detonator
Often our brains need a detonator to be really ready for action. A detonator is a small action that puts us in mental condition before physical effort.
Establishing rituals in preparation before playing sports is a good way to motivate yourself.
Examples: put on your sneakers (or two-fingered shoes), put your headphones on with the perfect playlist, drink a pre-workout before physical resistance exercises, warm up in a jumping jack style , etc.
2. Think about how you feel after the session
When the motivation is not there, and it can happen there is nothing serious in that, a tip is to remember the good that your workout gives you each time.
Certainly there are aches, physical fatigue, but physical exertion also releases endorphin in your brain, which gives you a lively feeling of pleasure during and after the session. It even seems that sport can make you addict!
Remembering this feeling of pleasure allows you to gain additional motivation.
On the other hand, if you find it difficult to get into sport, remember that you will be happy with yourself and have taken an additional step on the way to your goal so do not hesitate to get started !
3. Variety and distraction
We are big kids, kids like to play and have fun.
Including maximum variety in your workouts is not only a way to avoid weariness and keep you motivated. It is also an opportunity to surprise and shock your muscles, thus stimulating their growth, thus increasing your performance.
Variety is therefore a key concept if you want to increase your training performance and achieve your physical goals. Distraction is to be handled with parsimony because physical exercise requires concentration. However, you can do rowing or static cycling while listening to an audio book during warm-up or cardio session. Indeed, we are able to do several things at the same time it is even very stimulating for the brain.
4. Train with friends
Men and women are social animals: we love group activities. If you have the possibility, we recommend that you train with a partner.
Caring, companionship, healthy competition, all this additional stimulation allows you to surpass yourself and improve your results. Another major benefit of training with several during physical resistance exercises: the possibility of going to the bankruptcy of the muscle (last repetition possible) without taking risks. In fact, during exercise, your friend can take over the barbell or dumbbell, help you do 2 or 3 additional repetitions and work through fatigue, which greatly stimulates muscular hypertrophy.
5. “Make the moves”
Sometimes it’s hard to get started, and after 5 to 10 minutes the motivation is there. Make the movements before wondering if we want to do them, to launch out without thinking too much, it is an effective tactic to overcome this first course which pushes us towards inaction.
This allows us to short-circuit our mind at the crucial moment, that is to say just before getting into sport. It is at this moment that he likes to make reflections of the type “yesterday we did it, we don’t have to do it today”, or “and if we stayed rather in front of the TV he wouldn’t handsome”.
Activate the machine and “make the movements” before the mind sets you a trap based on laziness and demotivation.
6. Keep a log of your progress
Whether on your mobile phone or in a notebook, it is advisable to keep a diary that keeps track of your progress. The exercises performed, the number of sets, repetitions, the weights lifted, the distances and the time you will run, the duration of your training sessions, etc. You will get two major benefits.
On the one hand, you will know where you are day by day of your progress and according to your fatigue: you have precise data which allow you to situate yourself and analyze your progress in detail.
This also keeps you motivated because by dint of practice you will progress, and with your diary you will know exactly how fast you are progressing on each exercise, with the possibility of giving you challenges such as for example: increase by 15kg my bench press lying within 3 months.
7. Trapping your brain
It’s a tip that sums up all the others: trapping your brain is a way to bend your will and stimulate your motivation to play sports (or any other activity for that matter like eating steamed broccoli). Again, it’s all in your head, but how do you trap our naturally lazy mind?
Imagine you are supposed to run 10 km but the motivation is not there, whatever the reason. Tell yourself: come on I go out and I run only 4 km. Reducing the difficulty of the task can serve as a detonator. What happens, very often, is that after 2 or 3 km your body is launched and your mind follows it, the motivation arrives, and you finally manage to run 10 km. This story is very recurrent and proves that once the body is launched, everything else follows.
In summary, everything is in the head. Focus on your final goal and on each small step necessary to achieve it: motivation and results will come for sure!