4 Top Tips to Stay Motivated To Train This Winter. Tip Number 4: Sign Up To An Event

Most people are susceptible to that same well-known cycle: periods of time where your training goes really well and you see awesome improvements in your fitness, followed by times when training falls way down your list of priorities and you slowly lose that progress you worked so hard for.

If you think about how your training ebbs and flows, the chances are those periods of time where you train the hardest are in the build up to some sort of event – often a holiday, party, or wedding you want to get in shape for, or simply knowing that summer’s round the corner and you want to look your best when you’re stripping off.

The best way to keep that motivation up throughout the winter is to set targets for spring, leaving you no choice but to continue training throughout those difficult months. Find a running event, triathlon, or even an amateur weightlifting / crossfit competition, depending on what your goals are. Sign up for it, pay for it, and put it in your calendar. A fixed date for an event will help you stay focused, and keep you training on a regular schedule.

It’s a great feeling knowing you have a challenge to aim for, and it gives you an amazing sense of pride once you complete it. The added incentive to train is incredibly effective, and if you are raising money for charity, it’s even easier to stay committed.

Try sticking to these guidelines for success:   

• Don’t overshoot at first. For example, if you have recently taken up running, sign up to a 5k run rather than a marathon

• Sign up for several events throughout the season. Stagger these so they either build up gradually in length, or try and improve your time / performance – this way you keep pushing yourself and continue making progress

• Sign up to an event with a friend / group. This makes it a little less daunting if you haven’t raced before, plus training together has loads of benefits!

4 Top Tips to Stay Motivated To Train This Winter. Tip Number 3: Prepare Your Gear!

Training motivation is mostly down to intrinsic factors – setting realistic goals, tracking your progress, holding yourself accountable, and creating lifelong habits are key to long-term success. But sometimes that extra bit of motivation can come from physical things that we can prepare too. And that extra little push can make a big difference in taking our fitness to the next level. Here's three ways we can surround ourselves with things that can help keep our new year's fitness goals on track:

Buy some new kit 

The possibilities are almost endless, depending on the sport / exercise you do, but some ideas include: getting your own gym chalk, skipping rope, easy-carry water bottle to take running, or new protein shaker. For my birthday this year, I asked my sister- and brother-in-law for a dip belt. I couldn’t wait to get to the gym to try it out and make progress with it. It also meant I could really switch things up at the gym, adding weight to create higher intensity chin ups, pull ups and dips. A similar effect can be achieved by grabbing a new pair of gym shoes, some new lights to enable you to run at night, or new headphones that don’t fall out after five minutes of training. You'll really want to go and try your new kit out. Also, by spending a bit of money, you are making more of a commitment to your training, so will be more likely to stick to your programme. 

Create a new playlist

The power of music is really quite impressive. Firstly, making a new playlist specifically for your training, full of songs that you love and motivate you, will make you want to get out and train to those tracks. So you're more likely to stick to your training programme. Secondly, music has been shown to significantly reduce perceived exertion during exercise (1), so once you are training you're likely to find yourself pushing a little harder through that wall and taking your fitness to the next level.  

Get some new clothes

While it’s becoming trendy to wear workout clothes outside the gym, there is growing evidence that the clothing a person wears can trigger mental changes that positively affect their performance (2). If your workout gear consists of moth-eaten old t-shirts and mismatched socks, get some new clothes that you actually enjoy wearing and you’re much more likely to stick to your new year’s resolutions. What’s more, most new sportswear is really comfortable and is made from fabric that wicks away moisture, keeping you dry and making your workout that little bit more pleasant. So take advantage of some amazing sales on at the moment: now's a great time to invest in some new workout gear to keep you on track with your new year's resolutions!

References

1.     Fritz, T., Hardikar, S., Demoucron, M., Niessen, M., Demey, M., Giot, O., & Leman, M. (2013). Musical agency reduces perceived exertion during strenuous physical performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110(44), 17784-9.

2.     Adam, & Galinsky. (2012). Enclothed cognition. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(4), 918-925.

4 Top Tips To Stay Motivated To Train This Winter. Tip Number 2: Find a Gym Buddy.

It’s one thing skipping a training session here or there in favour of a lie-in when it’s so warm and cosy under the duvet. But when you’re lying there, picturing your gym buddy struggling on their own without a spotter - or worse still, thinking of that look of disappointment when you next see them – that’s a different matter. What’s more, you certainly don’t want to be left behind while your pal gets fitter / stronger / leaner than you, do you? So, start training with a gym buddy and you’re way more likely to stick to your plans and reach those fitness goals.

And the advantages don’t stop there - as well as helping with motivation, there are several other reasons why working out with a partner will help improve your fitness:

1.     You have your very own personal trainer

Well, kind of. The most beneficial part of having a personal trainer is the incentive to train harder – you’re paying them to encourage you to push out that all-important last rep, hold that plank for another 30 seconds, or push the speed up by one extra mph on the treadmill. And when you train with a partner, you’ll be the ones encouraging each other to push yourselves to the limits, where if you were on your own, you may have given up sooner. And a bit of friendly competition always helps to keep the intensity up!

2.     Workouts can be more fun.

A key message you’ll notice on this site regarding fitness, is to keep switching up your workouts. Your body becomes accustomed to the same exercises, and that adaptation leads to plateaus where your progress slows or even stops. That can be a real motivation killer. By working out with a friend, you can teach each other new exercises, try moves you can only do in pairs, or even switch things up completely by playing some one-on-one basketball or squash for your cardio instead of your usual run. That way, while having more fun, you’ll also smash through that training plateau by forcing your body to readapt to new exercises.  

3.     You’ll have a spotter.

Those last few reps of any exercise are the most important. On your own you might have stopped at 7 reps because you’re not sure if you can manage number 8. Having a spotter will give you the confidence to push out those last couple of reps, knowing you won’t drop the bar on your chest and end up in some viral gym fail compilation. Those last few reps, where you should be pushing yourself to exhaustion, are key to really testing the muscles, forcing them to grow to adapt to the intensity of the training you’re doing. 

4 Top Tips To Stay Motivated To Train This Winter. Tip Number 1: Switch Things Up!

Did I just see the first Christmas ad on TV? It doesn’t seem like yesterday that I was dusting off the barbeque, drooling over the thought of seasonal strawberries and asparagus, and preparing some killer summer playlists. It can’t be over already, surely?!

Well, although Christmas is still a little way off, the days are certainly getting shorter, colder, and darker. But that doesn’t mean your drive to get fit, lean and strong should suffer: Here is a series of five posts, containing five simple tips to stay motivated throughout the winter months. So instead of starting again from scratch next year, you’ll already be in the best shape of your life, ready for the summer. 

Winter Motivation Tip 1: Switch Things Up!

This tip applies for any time of the year, but is especially important during the winter. This is because many of the outdoor activities you may do to keep fit can become more challenging in the bad weather, and a drink at the pub can become a much more enticing evening activity! For some, training in the winter is good fun – you certainly don’t overheat, and the dark / rain / snow can strangely provide a sense of adventure. But if the thought of soggy socks and near-frostbitten fingertips fills you with dread, don’t let this throw you off your fitness regime.

Instead, use this time of year to take up a new sport – squash, indoor swimming, boxing, different exercise classes… the choice of warm indoor activities is endless. And you may find the excitement of a new sport or activity picks you up out of a training rut and reboots your love for exercise. The ultimate goal is keeping the sport / activities you’re doing so fun and engaging that you forget you’re even doing exercise! So, if you normally go running to keep fit, try a high-intensity kickboxing class, or if you usually hit the same fitness class, try swimming, or a new freeweights routine.  

For the weightlifters out there, this rule definitely applies to you too, maybe even more so. Sticking to the same routine for a long time can get boring, and your body becomes accustomed to the same kind of exercise, leading to training ‘plateaus’ where you stop seeing progress. Try using bodyweight routines for 4-6 weeks: press-ups, chin-ups, dips, box jumps, burpees, and if possible progress to more advanced movements like pistol squats and handstand presses. You will notice some really fast improvements in the number of reps you can do. If your bodyweight is lighter than the weights you normally lift, don’t fret: because you’ll be using different muscle fibres to the ones you’re used to, and it’s a more cardiovascular workout than usual, when you return to heavier weights you should have the added endurance to push out an extra few reps. Also, most bodyweight exercises massively engage the core, which will also help with all the major weightlifting exercises. 

Boredom and reaching plateaus are the two main reasons people lose motivation for exercise... Throw in some bad weather and you can see why it's so easy to fall off the tracks during winter. Switch things up and you'll keep your training fresh, fun, reach new levels of fitness / strength, and all while staying warm and dry!