Tips to Keep Training Motivation High

 The Training Motivation Struggle

Finding yourself still struggling with those training goals you set at the beginning of the year or season? You’re not alone. The trick is to find fun ways to boost your training motivation and make it easier for yourself to stick to your plan. that the key to reaching those seemingly impossible fitness goals is a little bit of planning.

The year may be more half way over, but it’s never too late to break those old habits and begin your journey to a new healthy and active lifestyle. Here are a few tips that will help keep your training motivation high.

Invest in New Workout Apparel… and Actually Wear It!

Buying new clothes is always exciting! Remember a time when you purchased something new and couldn’t wait to show it off? It works the same way with gym clothes. Buying new workout apparel is a great place to get started. Find some exercise gear that you absolutely love. You should buy active wear that is comfortable, breathable, and looks good.

This will help boost your confidence, get you in the right mindset to train, and make you look forward to your next workout. It’s also important to keep those new clothes readily accessible, somewhere that you can get to them at all times. Prepare a gym bag and keep it in your trunk or by your door. The less planning and forethought you need to do, the easier you will make it on yourself to develop a gym routine. If you love your new purchase, you’ll also be more motivated to wear it.

Make a New Playlist with Music You Absolutely Love

While some people prefer to workout in silence, listening to music can help many trainers maintain focus. A study that was published in 2010 called Has revealed that listening to pleasurable music stimulates electrical activity in many areas of the brain that are important for controlling movement coordination.  This occurrence is non-voluntary, meaning that as soon as you hear music your brain has already been stimulated and is ready to tell the body to get up and move. Music can give your body the training motivation boost it needs when your head isn’t in the game.

A common complaint is that people don’t like the music selection at their local gym or fitness club. If you feel the same way, then creating a new workout-specific playlist can help. You may actually have a playlist of all your favorite music already, but making one exclusively for workout purposes is a must. Psychologists have indentified tempo (speed) and rhythm response (the attribute of music that makes you want to dance) to be the most important qualities to look for when creating a workout-specific playlist.

Make sure that the songs are upbeat and keep you up and wanting to move. My playlist is full of high-energy rap tunes with great beats that gets my energy up and keeps my mind focused before I begin my workout. Making a brand new playlist on your phone with all of your favorite jams is a fun and easy way to increase your training motivation and make exercising a bit easier.

Record your Progress

When getting started with your fitness journey, or even if you’ve been at it for a while now, recording your progress is very important. It doesn’t take much time, either. Simply recording your weight lifted and reps performed is enough. (Your trainers at Vertex Fitness do this for you-just another benefit of working with a  professional trainer.) Keeping records can be as easy as a journal entry, a status update, or even a picture or short video from your workout. With each post or journal entry, note how you felt before, during, and after the workout. Talk about the progress you see in yourself or how you overcame a difficult time. Become the author of your own story and you can go anywhere!

Each time you do this you are motivating yourself to stay on track towards your goal. .Actually seeing the proof that you are getting stronger, when you do more reps and lift more weight, is key to maintaining your training motivation. It is recommend that you post your progress at least once a week so that others can see your dedication. This way they will see your work ethic and cheer you on in your quest to reach your goal. This is a great tactic to hold you accountable along the way.