I received a message from another fitness professional friend asking me
what I thought were the top 5 motivators for people to get back into training from say injury or life change
or just to get out of a good old fashioned rut!
So this got me thinking,
This question is not so easily answered though as we are all very different people and are motivated by different reasons,
I could only draw from my own experience with clients and also my own motivations and how they have changed over the years,
some people are motivated by challenge as in the case of some of my clients, I also have another client who suffers from back pain and his motivations for training are not performance or really strength motivated just to live his day to day life with as little pain from his back issue as possible! but now I come to think about it his motivations have changed since starting training with me, lately he has become more interested in his nutrition, and when we started training it was with a main focus on strengthening the core to support the spine and improving posture to combat the hours spent sitting at his desk,
but now he can be seen in the photos from Sunday madness sessions and is doing all sorts of dynamic strength based movements and has a much broader range of interest in training! yes Phil I'm talking about you!
Other people are motivated by competition for example those active in club sports or Sunday league football or rugby,
I have had numerous clients that are post rehab and just want to get back to their previous performance levels university rugby players recreational tennis players all with ACL surgeries, so their motivations are clear and easily understandable,
Then there are people like me who are not challenge driven or competitive, my original motivations where purely aesthetic I just wanted to look better and feel good about myself, so improved self esteem was my main motivator but over the years my focus changed to strength and strength is a learned skill that has to be practiced to be improved and the only way to improve is to challenge your self, now I am older fitness is a factor also but as I'm sure anyone who has read through my blog will know I simply detest cardio!
so I had to find modes of training that would give me my desired improved fitness without causing brain death from sheer boredom!
So new ways of training can also be motivational hey its fun to try new stuff! even if your crap at it there's a motivator right there the desire to get better at a given task,
Training with someone who does things differently from you can also be great for motivation and can get you out of a rut,
Take me training with the Thing for example whilst strength and power are always a big part of his focus he is also mad on conditioning as he is motivated from his background in boxing and also his love of MMA and lets face it fighters are some of the fittest athletes there are, which makes him the perfect choice for me to train with in light of what I need to work on, I still get to do the strength and hypertrophy stuff I love but training with him means I'm made to do the stuff I really need to focus on and his sadistic love of torturing people and depriving them of rest means I work pretty hard too!
Then we have the postpartum ladies who want to regain their pre baby figures also the guys who just want to fight off the mid life spread,
and I could go on and on there are so many different people so many different motivations and reasons for training yet to my mind they are all very personal and need to be addressed on a case by case basis.
Like I said in my last post all I need to do is look at a few Frank zane photos and I'm motivated,
This is still quiet open ended as I really cannot say what are the top 5 motivators but hopefully I have touched on a few that can help people whatever their motivational needs are.
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