staying motivated

All sorts of people start working out at the beginning of the year. They join exclusive health spas or the local YMCA. They spend a ton of cash on a personal trainer. Some purchase equipment they can use in the privacy of their own home. Hundreds swear off foods that taste good, hoping to be leaner by year’s end. Most of these people make it through the first month of training or dieting or what have you. Few are faithful for a full twelve months. Lacking the proper motivation, they skip workouts or neglect their coach. The starving ones forget their diet and, in a moment of weakness, enter the doors of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Tragic isn’t it? If only they’d had the right motivation at the right time, they could’ve made it through to the other side as happier, healthier people.

I do not want this to be your sad story at the end of this year. I want you to lead a satisfying, invigorating life. To that end, I offer this list of suggestions for staying power. If you will follow even five of these ten simple steps to sustained motivation, you will be the envy of all your neighbors who failed to stick with their plan for improvement. When they beg you to share your secret of success, would you be kind enough to send them my way? I’m getting paid per click, so I need some traffic here!

Here are my top ten keys to sustained motivation…

10 – Spend a lot of money on equipment.

I realize this doesn’t work for everyone, but it works for me and every other cheapskate in the room. The thought of spending hard earned cash on something that sits on a shelf or hangs in the garage unused drives me insane. If you’re a tightwad, live a little. You may regret it when you run out of money for necessities later in the month, but the anger you feel then will burn a few calories and push you to make use that pair of running shoes, that bike, that rowing machine, that thigh master. If I’m wrong on the expensive bike thing, please send me a personal invitation to your garage sale. I’ll be happy to take any $10,000 custom bike off your hands for $150. Please purchase a 60cm frame just in case.

9 – Buy a carnival mirror.

When you look in a regular mirror, what do you see? You see the real you. You imagine that you look good. This is okay if you really do look good. But if you’re like me, the imaginary you that you see staring back at you is keeping you from maximum improvement. Enter the carnival mirror. If you buy one that makes you look larger than you are and use it exclusively for the first month of training, you will see great gains. You’ll work yourself into a frazzle trying to rid yourself of those extra inches. When you switch to a regular mirror at the end of the month, you’ll be amazed at the new you! “I lost 12 inches overnight!” you’ll say. Your friends will smile and shake their heads as they walk away to hide the scissors.

8 – Sign up for a race or challenging event.

No one likes to look like a fool. Not even me. You can use this aversion to shame to our advantage. All you have to do is sign up for a race and suddenly the motivation you’ve been searching for is yours. You start training like, well, like a fool. You put in the hours. You challenge yourself. You push yourself to the limits of your ability. You laugh. You cry. You puke. Okay, maybe you don’t spew, but I do. I usually feel better afterwards. Why do you do all this? Because you paid good money to enter the race and because you don’t want to be last, not even in your age group. A word of caution here: Don’t sign up for a race too early in your training. I did that and ended up third in my age group in my first race…third out of three!

7 – Workout with NICE people who are stronger, faster, better than you.

Finding a running partner or a bicycle club that won’t destroy your self-confidence is harder than you think. You can’t seek out people weaker, slower and worse than you or your pooled mediocrity will destroy what little fitness you each had. At the same time, you want to be careful about the stronger, faster, better people you meet. Some of them are good coaches who will patiently answer your questions and tell you gently when you’re out of line. You’ll learn a lot from such people just by watching them. Others are Sith Lords who allow you to tag along just so they can drop you in the middle of nowhere. If you don’t like riding alone, tired and miles from anywhere, check your potential partners out before you head out on the mean streets. Trust me on this one. I failed to do this and watched the friendly sounding Oz Bicycle Club peloton ride away from me numerous times. Once I was left for dead with a thunderstorm approaching from the west. Get references!

6 – Add variety to your workout schedule.

With few exceptions doing the same thing over and over will diminish motivation over time. If you run or ride the same route 365 times, it’s going to get old. Trust me. It’s going to get really, really, really old. Avoiding boredom takes a bit of sleuthing, but the time spent online or with your nose in a book will keep your “want to” going for a lot longer than the same old, same old. Learn about fartleks (runners use weird words), progressive runs, tempo workouts, intervals, time trials and other painful things you can do to break the monotony of calm and ease. If you can’t read, ask questions. (There’s something wrong with that last sentence, but I can’t quite put my finger on what it is.) Reading the workouts of the superstars I’m friends with on Twitter and DailyMile informed my queries. “What’s this?” I’d ask. “And how do you do it?” With the info I gained I was able to add spice to my daily exercise times. If you do the same, you’ll be motivated to keep going for months or years or, dare I say it, decades.

5 – Take up photography.

If you don’t think holding a camera in your hand can motivate you to stick with your workout plan, you’ve got a thing or two to learn about life. The first thing you need to know is this: cameras do not lie, at least not when handled by amateurs. Snapshots show every physical flaw – those fluffy hips, those frog legs, that sagging belly – in all its glory. You know it’s true. If you want to use the camera as a motivator, get up off the couch. Do it now! Go find your camera and head for a room with a mirror. It’s okay if you stop to catch your breath once or twice as needed. When you’re finally standing in front of a looking glass, make sure it’s not the curvy carnival mirror you bought earlier. Then turn on your camera, take off the lens cap (my mom always forgets to do that) and shoot yourself. Make sure to get your most unflattering side. The image you’ve captured should be awful looking. When you’re sure you’ve got the worst possible photo of yourself, print it and put it on your refrigerator or on the cupboard door where you hide the donuts or both. This is your “before” picture and your aim from the day you shoot it is to get fit enough to take and print an “after” image that will shock and amaze all who see them side by side. See how motivating photography can be?

4 – Run or ride past that house with the evil dog that always breaks his chain.

When something is known to be painful, most people avoid it or put it off. That’s why the dentist is the most hated man in town. He’s the guy that pokes and prods and makes you wince. Speed work and intervals are the painful side of working out. You’ve got to really want to improve in your chosen sport to subject yourself to the torture involved. If you actually read the heading above this paragraph, you’re probably wondering where in the world I’m going with this. The dog hasn’t even come up yet. Well, here’s what you’ve been waiting to hear. If you intentionally ride past that house where “evil dog” dwells, you get all the added motivation you need to increase your speed. He’ll chase you. You’ll flee with your heart in your throat. Everyone gets a good workout. Repeat as necessary when your plan calls for intervals. (A variation for you swimmer types: have a friend throw a half dozen piranha in the pool after you’ve done your warm up laps.)

3 – Find something you can do better than someone who’s stronger, faster, better than you.

There are people in this world who can ride their bikes at over 30mph for an hour or two. There are others who can run a sub-6:00 pace for miles. I can do neither and I’m guessing very few of you reading this is like one of these scary fast people. Their amazing speed and breathtaking pace probably doesn’t motivate you very much. Perhaps it even dampens your spirits. If so, find something you’re better at than one of these freaks of nature. Let me give you an example from my own life to get you started in the right direction. I have a friend. I’ll call him Steve Speirs. He is the two-time winner of the Cayman Islands Marathon. He didn’t finish with a sub-6:00 pace, but he was sub-7:00. He’s a super-human runner in my book. A week or two after his repeat victory he was listed in the Washington D.C. Running Report as the sixth best runner. Pretty impressive! Well, I got out a piece of scrap paper and listed all the runners in my hometown. What I discovered was amazing! I rank higher in speed than sixth among Argonians who run regularly! I am now motivated to maintain a higher ranking than Steve and so I train harder.

2 – Develop your guilt complex.

Perhaps you didn’t grow up in a home emotionally damaging enough to fully develop one of the athlete’s greatest motivators: false guilt! How sad. You probably lay around in bed one or two mornings a week. There are, after all, no voices in your head shouting, “Lazy slob!” You most likely skip workouts with no remorse. You are constantly on the edge of slackerdom and you don’t even realize it! You think you’re happy! You need help! Call the seven meanest people you know – your dentist, your proctologist, your mother-in-law, your drill sergeant, your cat loving cousin, your pizza delivery boy, your therapist – and beg them to help you. Ask each of them to call you at 4:00 in the morning on a different day of the week. Instruct them not to say, “Hello,” or “How are you?” at any time! Instead tell them they need to overuse words like should and ought as they belittle you. Have them continue to ring your number every day until you dream about their insults every night and hear their haranguing in your mind when they’re not around. When that day comes, call each of them up and give them a piece of your mind. Tell them how angry their unkind words made you and promise not to speak to them ever again. When you’ve called all seven of them and broken off each relationship, go for a run. You know you should!

1 – Sign up for DailyMile!

Some of you are the sole runner or cyclist or swimmer in your community. You have to drive miles to meet up with a running partner or a bicycle club. Maybe your pool is only open in the summer. I suppose that’s a good idea if the temps drop below freezing in your area. If you’re a loner – a sad, sad athlete like me – let me tell you what to do. Get online and sign up to be a part of the best online community in the universe - DailyMile! (They didn’t pay me to say that. Wish they had, but they didn’t.) The friends you meet there will push you to improve. Their encouraging words will get you through the tough days when the wheels fell off or the “evil dog intervals” you planned don’t work out as well as you had hoped. Post your sob story on your DailyMile profile and dozens, no hundreds, no millions of like-minded athletes will say things that would make Dr. Phil happy. (There might have been a little exaggeration in that last sentence.) What are you waiting for? Sign up now! Encouragement and motivation is just a click away!

Disclaimer: If you follow the suggestions given here and unexpected harm comes to you or your family, call Steve Speirs and ask his advice. He’s not a lawyer, but he might be able to fix what you’ve destroyed. Maybe.

- Originally posted on the DailyMile Community Blog