“ EXERCISE MOTIVATION: 101”

      “How do I improve my motivation?”. This is a common question that I am often asked in regards to exercise. Here are 10 strategies that can help you increase your motivation towards exercise and improve your exercise adherence.

   1/ The first step that I would recommend to improve your exercise motivation would be to set an individual goal or goals for exercise. Set goals that are specific; I will complete 20-minutes of running, four times a week, and set goals that are realistic, challenging, but attainable.

    Set both short-term and long-term goals. Long-term goals provide information about where you are going, and short-term goals provide information regarding your progress towards your long-term goal. Short-term goals make your long-term goals more manageable, and  increase your motivation as you achieve each short-term goal, providing you with feelings of competence and accomplishment. It is important that these goals are written down. Writing goals down increases your commitment to reaching your goals and is an important part of successful goal setting.

   2/ Focus on staying in the ‘moment’ and enjoy the processes and the experiences of exercise. This can include concentrating on your breathing, your technique, your concentration and so on. This process is referred to as developing your intrinsic motivation, where you are motivated to exercise because you enjoy the processes involved in exercise. Research has shown that intrinsic motivation is essential for maintaining your adherence to long term exercise, as you are likely to continue with exercise if you enjoy the act of participating in exercise.

  3/Focusing on losing weight or gaining muscle mass is often used by the fitness industry to promote and motivate you to exercise participation.  This process is known as developing extrinsic motivation, where motivation is fuelled by feelings that you “must” or “should” participate in exercise to receive rewards such as developing an ‘ideal’ body type or to please others. Extrinsic motivation is useful to get you involved in exercise initially, but the exercise psychology research shows that you are likely to drop out of exercise within the first six months if you only develop this type of motivation to adhere to exercise.

    *To improve your motivation towards exercise and to enhance your long-term exercise adherence I would suggest that you concentrate on developing your intrinsic motivation. Extrinsically motivating rewards like increases in cardio-vascular and cardio-respiratory health, decreased body fat and increased muscle tissue will come naturally after long-term exercise.

  4/  Gaining social support from your family members and peers has consistently been shown to enhance your exercise adherence and motivation. Research shows that social support increases your self-confidence, commitment and motivation through receiving positive support from others. It is therefore important that you select an environment where you feel connected and comfortable with others. In exercise psychology this is termed as relatedness, which enhances intrinsic motivation as you have a feeling of belonging due to you being in the company of others that you can relate to.

  5/ Relatedness can further be improved by working with a partner that you enjoy spending time with and who is at a similar fitness and skill level as yourself. You and your partner can provide feedback on each others progress, technically and psychologically, and promote exercise effort, commitment, persistence and knowledge. This will help develop your intrinsic motivation and increase your long term adherence to exercise.

  6/ When selecting an exercise activity it is important that you feel competent in the activity that you choose. Feelings of competency increase your intrinsic motivation through giving you feelings of self-confidence, achievement, and the success of mastering a task. You should not choose activities that you do not feel competent at; for example if you have poor co-ordination skills you should not initially jump into an advanced step aerobics class, as this will decrease your intrinsic motivation to exercise due to a lack of success and achievement,