1. Commit Publicly!

This goes back to the challenge from one friend. Let it known that you’re starting an exercise program or training for an upcoming event. This is as simple as posting it to your social media profiles let you friends know and ask them to not let you backed out of the race. And hopefully you have a good group of friends and family that will help keep you accountable to going to the gym.

2. Hire a Personal Training/Fitness Coach

Part of a personal trainer job is to be a motivator this can be done many ways just watch an episode of The Biggest Loser and Jillian and you can see sometimes we will be the drill sergeant yelling to pick it up and then in tears as you see you progress you made for the week. (Okay maybe not in tears but you get the point) Also Personal Trainers have crazy cancellation policies most requiring a 24 or 12 hour advance notice to not be charged for the session. That’s motivation enough to not hit the snooze bar on an early morning and to keep your hard earned money.

The first part so far focus on external factors of motivation. Using your friends, trainers and money as motivation. That great but ultimately for you to be successful the motivation has to come from within. You need to find the internal reasons for choosing a fitness lifestyle and how to turn motivation into habit. The next couple tips all address how to find those internal factors that will lead to your fitness success.

 3. Form goals using the SMART Acronym

SMART stand for Specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time based.

Setting the goal of I want to lose weight is not enough. It lacks the elements of SMART to make it a goal that will keep you motivated. It’s not specific enough, do you want to lose 2 pounds or 20 pounds? It’s not measurable for the same reason. Yes, it achievable and realistic cause even losing one pound would be achieving the goal but is it rewarding losing just a pound. And finally there no time constraint do you want to lose weight tomorrow or six months from now.

Now let look at a same goal of losing weight with the SMART Acronym. Using the acronym the goal would look something like this I want to lose 10 pounds in three months. This goals meets all the parts of the SMART Acronym if specific with the goal of 10 pounds it measure and achievable as most exercise science books recommended a healthy weight loss goal is 1 to 2 pounds per week. Using the fitness knowledge of the 1 to 2 pound per week makes it realistic and finally it time based in the fact it sets the deadline of three months.

Okay so we covering the external factors, touch on goal setting to create motivation. The last tip is the most important and will greatly affect your success it you mental frame. It has been long said that the sport of triathlon is 80% mental and 20% physical. The top pros talk about the importance of having mental toughness the ability to bounce back and overcome adversity whether in training or on race day.

The easiest way to do is learning to re-frame you self-talk. What exactly is your self-talk the best way to describe it is the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. We see it plenty of times in movies and TV where a character is caught between the arguments of the two. In the instance the angel is you’re positive self-talk encouraging you along the way reminding you of the hard work you put in and the healthy changes you making. The devil is negative telling you to stop, letting the word can’t creep into your head and mind. It for this reason alone you must work to get rid of the devil on your shoulder and replace can’t with can.

Initially this can be a challenging task as most exercise science textbooks state it take 66 days to turn a activity into a habit, but as you achieve your goals and transition into a training program the progress and changes you make will help to give you the confidence needed to push the devil off the cliff and to be successful in your fitness journey.

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