Fitness Motivation & Fitness Fatigue

Motivation has been broken down into two categories. Intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is motivation to earn a specific reward or avoid punishment. Intrinsic motivation is motivation to perform an activity for personal reasons or its own sake. Studies have shown that while intrinsic motivation can increase task performance, people who had high intrinsic motivation in one task had lower than average or minimum performance across other tasks. Ultimately, the study saw that highly intrinsically motivating initial tasks led participants to perform worse in subsequent tasks if they were uninteresting, but not if they were interesting.

Ok, so I’m sure if you’re still reading you’re asking yourself “why is Jae rambling on with all this psycho babble”. Well human psychology and motivation with work is similar to how we are in our fitness journeys as well. There is a reason why we all much prefer to have jobs that we just thoroughly enjoy. Why would fitness be any different? This then helps us understand “fitness fatigue”. What is “fitness fatigue”? Well, similar to any job with multiple tasks fitness requires you to do different exercises, and sometimes the same exercises and after a while like any other task you just get bored with doing it. At some point, the physical motivation of the gains (or losses) does not outweigh the mental lack of motivation and boredom we feel with doing exercises or tasks that we find mundane.

For example, most people have heard of a runner’s high. Let me tell you, I played soccer in high school and college so I fully understand the endorphins associated with exercise but to tell you the truth I have always hated running because I find it EXTREMELY boring. In my mind - to this day - running after a ball with formations and strategy is much more mentally stimulating to me than running around a circle. To my track people out there I applaud you, and I’m sure there is strategy involved but it’s just not for me. Ok, now that we have a real life example of a fitness activity that I find boring, let me tell you how I became “a runner”.

Last November (2019), I completed my very first - and maybe my only - half marathon. I created a running training plan, and ran/trained with some friends to get prepared for this major milestone. I won’t say that I hated every minute of it, but it definitely was nowhere near as fulfilling as working out to Soca and Hip-hop music in Zumba and step aerobic classes. So how did I do it? I used extrinsic motivation because the intrinsic motivation just wasn’t enough to keep me going. First, I started out with my friend’s challenge to run 30 miles in 30 days. Sounds crazy at first right? I know. But a mile a day on average sounds a lot less scary than 30 miles. I would incrementally work my way up to 2 miles, then 3 miles, then 4 miles. Before I knew it I was running an average pace of 10:25 miles/min on a 12K run (7.5 miles). Which to me is huge; going from not being a runner to that in 3 months was great. I also rewarded myself heavily for the above and beyond fitness efforts I was doing. I would run a mile before my personal training session as a warm up, workout for another 1 to 1.5 hours, have my favorite breakfast or smoothie, and then workout again that evening with a “fun” workout class.

So what am I trying to tell you? We’ve all heard that fitness is a lifestyle and a journey. What less people talk about is how to jumpstart that journey. We all like to think it’s as simple as January 1st hitting and deciding that you are going to lose 30 lbs just like that but that’s not the reality of how this works. The motivation to keep going, and to be frank the safest and most practical way of becoming a fit anything (runner, bodybuilder, gym rat in general) is a combination of incremental wins broken down by the smallest steps over time. You have to make it fun and worth it for you from how you exercise to the food you eat. I will be the first one to tell you that I don’t like diet food. The idea of eating chicken breast and brown rice for even 5 days straight 2 meals a day makes me want to scream. If you’re a bodybuilder then I understand that’s a necessary evil, but if you’re not, why are you making yourself suffer just so that you have to restart your journey again? My unsolicited advice to you is to find healthy alternatives to your favorite foods and use them as a reward for you putting in the work after incrementally building up your fitness level. Also, be sure to switch up your workout and what you do. Always try new gyms, new workout classes, new types of workouts when growing on your fitness journey. Make it fun so that it’s also fulfilling. And if you fall off the wagon, just give yourself some grace, pick yourself up and start again because remember it’s a lifestyle :).

XOXO

Jae from The Last Mermaid