One of the biggest contributors to performance is motivation. You can be the quickest, strongest or smartest person around but without motivation you will just end up dreaming about what you could have accomplished if you had put in more work.
To be clear, I will talk about what motivates athletes to do their best on every training or competition, but you can apply this to everything in life basically (job, diet, education, marriage etc.)
First of all lets see what motivation is. We can define motivation as the ability to start a certain job/assignment/task and to continue doing it to reach a (final) goal. As already mentioned you can have huge potential in becoming great but if you don't put in the work your talent won't develop and you will watch other successful people stealing your place in the spotlight.
Why is it so hard to stay motivated?
Giving everything you have in a competition or training will bring you to your breaking point, the point when doing sports is no longer fun. You feel tired, you are in pain and the only thing you want now is to quit. But the only right thing to do, if you don't put your health in jeopardy, is to push through. That's what separates regular athletes from excellent athletes. If you can't bring yourself to push for one more minute (for maybe the next 60 minutes) or run one more kilometer (for the next 20+) you have already lost. If you manage to do this you will feel awesome but only until you get home and think about all the other sacrifices you have to do (eat well, sleep a lot, do you homework/job related work etc). That's the next wall you have to break through in order to reach your potential.
Hitting so many obstacles and trying to break each and every of them is hard and they all drag your motivation level further down which can result in one of many symptoms of low motivation:
- Doing the workout without much effort (you just go through the drills without pushing hard)
- You think about things you can do instead of working out
- Shortening your training sessions
- Skipping training altogether
If you experience any of these things (this is not a complete list just to be clear) you might be losing motivation.
How to boost your motivation again?
There are many things that can boost your motivation again.
One of my favorite "tools" is setting small goals. When I started out with triathlon everything felt hard. I ran 8 kilometers and felt dead at the end. After looking at the watch I realized that it took me almost an hour to finish. "I have to do better then this!" was my reaction and soon I was able to run 10 kilometers in an hour. After that I was aiming for a 5 minutes per kilometer pace which I also cracked. Now I just keep subtracting a second or two every now and then just to see if I can make it. If yes, AWESOME, and if not, I will nail it next time.
One thing here to keep in mind is to be realistic. You can't expect to perform miracles without proper training so keep going one step at a time and you will be getting better and feel motivated more often then not.
Another thing you can do is setting long term goals. My goal is to finish the Ironman race in Nice, France next year and that's a very tangible goal. I know what it takes to finish it (swim 3.8 km, ride a bike for 180 km and run a 42.2 km marathon) it so I ask myself every day: "What do I need to do to finish the race?" and "Have I done everything I can to be ready to finish the race?". If you keep asking yourself these questions you and answer them honestly you will either get more motivated or you will realize you are shooting to high and make changes.
Some people say to embrace the pain during the workout. I am not really a fan of this because I don't like any aspect of it but what I do like is the feeling you have after a hard workout where you got your ass kicked but still managed to push till the end. That's something that keeps me working out every day.
One of the greatest things you can do is to get yourself some training buddies. It can be a coach, parent or someone you can work out with. A year and a half ago I went on a cool ride with two of my friends from Zagreb to Crikvenica. It was hard, it was painful but because we kept pushing each other we made it there and back. If you sometimes don't feel like working out someone else who shares the same goal as you can tip you into the right direction and maybe into a great workout.
One thing I also want to mention is what I learned from Bear Grylls's book Your life: Tran for it. In this book he mentions one of his favorite tools that takes him through a workout. Show up at the gym and train for 5 to 10 minutes. You will more often then not start pushing as hard as you can and finish the workout but on the rare occasion you still don't feel like working out just quit. Do some stretching and call it a day. There is nothing worse then working out below your usual level and get hurt because you didn't focus enough and twisted your ankle, hurt your hip and broke something.
This brings me to my final point. Mix it up!
“Variety is the spice of life”
If you don't feel like running go to the gym and lift some weights, play tennis, football (not the handegg variation they like it the US), go outside and just walk around. If you can attend a game, do it! Seeing other athletes and their performance will make you want more training the next day for sure. Just make sure to keep your coach (if you have one) informed so that he/she can make adjustments to your training.
Whatever you do make it fun! If you don't have fun at any point you are in for a bad time. It's like ordering a steak and getting something that looks beautiful but tastes horrible. You will get full but the feeling at the end want be satisfying.
With that in mind, see you next time (DFTBA)