REMEMBER WHY When you feel demotivated and struggle to keep going, remember your goals, and let them inspire you.
Goals make obstacles blips
Personal trainer
Paul O'Brien
This column normally concerns itself with the ‘how to’ of exercise. The truth is that having all the ‘how to’ in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t also have a powerful ‘why’.
My clients frequently ask for advice on remaining motivated with their training. We all suffer dips in motivation. My answer always directs them back to the same place – the goal. The goal is your ‘why’.
The first step
In my opinion, a comprehensive approach to positive lifestyle change through exercise comprises three distinct but interrelated steps: having a powerful goal; following a structured exercise programme specific to those goals; eating a healthy, balanced diet. The latter two steps are vital, but utterly meaningless without the first.
Without a goal, there is no focus to your training. A powerful goal is your restart button when your motivation wanes. Without it, when adversity strikes, as it frequently will, there’s simply no reason to go on. It’s easier to quit. In the immortal words of Henry Ford, ‘obstacles are those frightful things you come up against when you take your eye off the goal’.
A perfect example of the importance of a powerful goal was demonstrated last weekend by the inspiring group who set a world record during the ‘Reek 24-hour challenge’. Do you think they came up against obstacles during their training and on the day? You bet they did! Did it stop them? You bet it didn’t! Why? Simply because they were working toward a goal so motivating and powerful that obstacles became mere blips.
My secret
I am frequently asked how I remain motivated to exercise. I make my living from exercise and I train separately most days on top of that. That’s a lot of exercise! So what keeps me going when sometimes I can’t be bothered? What’s my powerful internal motivator? Here’s my secret.
About 20 years ago I was an out-of-shape smoker whose idea of exercise was lifting pints in my local pub. A friend offered me his place in the London Marathon as he had to travel abroad. I accepted. After all, running a marathon was on my ‘To Do Before I Die’ list.
I trained for about two months (not nearly enough), struggled through the race, dribbled over the line and swore ‘never again’.
About a week later, something happened. I was going into town and had to run to catch a bus. I caught it, jumped lithely aboard and stood on the deck. I wasn’t out of breath or sweating. Instead I felt the energy flowing through my body. I felt vital, alive … connected. It was my ‘eureka’ moment.
I became aware of the difference exercise was making in my life. I saw, for the first time, how exercise allows you to access to the power within. I realised the effect my physical well-being had on my emotional, mental and spiritual states. That was the moment exercise and physical fitness became an intrinsic part of my life.
Your challenge
I extend this challenge to you all. Is it possible that instead of feeling like you’re the sum of your disconnected parts, you can feel powerfully centred, bursting with vitality and full of the good old joie de vivre? Take yourself on and begin tracking the changes in your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual states as you exercise. Use a diary.
Like many spiritual practices or forms of emotional training, physical exercise can begin to give you back some of the power you have given away through past lifestyle choices.
You can powerfully affect your own life and that of those around you. As Gandhi said, ‘Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves’.
Paul O’Brien is a Personal Trainer and Life Coach and runs his own fitness and coaching business in Westport. He is the founder of Bootcamp West, a fitness programme running in Westport, Castlebar and Louisburgh. For information about fitness training, coaching, bootcamp programmes and new TRX classes, email Paul at paul@bootcampwest.com or call 086 1674515. visit www.bootcampwest.com or e-mail paul@bootcampwest.com or telephone 086 1674515.
