Music, trickery, not thinking too much & robot fantasies : my ways of beating the exercise lulls – talking motivation and how to keep going
what im wearing: primark workout matching co-ords, primark waterbottle, primark cap & primark sunglasses
motivation: put your brain on mute & let your body decide
I’ve really been enjoying my foray into fitness so far this year on Frassy – and with lots more to come. I started off sharing my easy arm routine (take a look here), next up will be abs/chest/derriere workout…and beyond that, fitness is a journey they say, so let’s just see what comes next. I have been giving yoga a try recently, being young and so busy, I have always overlooked flexibility, putting muscular strength as my priority – but I do believe in the soul benefits of exercise, as you well know – so slowly but surely I have been limbering up my rigid limbs. It’s hard to find the patience for something so slow moving but I’ll keep trying. And that brings me to what I wanted to talk about today: motivation to keep going. It can be so hard to keep at – believe me I know. It’s not everyday I get to run on a sunny beach like this one, last week I was back in Paris and that bitter cold beat me down, I skipped too many runs to count, blaming the grey rainy skies for my laziness. But really I had no legitimate excuse – and we so often reel off excuses with an ease that leads us nowhere. And so what to do when it seems almost unbearable to go exercise? Everyone has different methods, personally ‘fitspiration’ doesn’t work for me, the promise of delicious food later doesn’t work either, on bad days I’d rather eat 3 apples for dinner and skip the gym- working out with a friend sounds fun but most of my friends are on different schedules or just don’t exercise (France is allergic to exercise it seems). What does work for me – is music – really great energetic songs. I have an entire playlist on spotify created for just these days – and I’ll listen to it when I am lacking the stamina to lace up my sneakers and get going. But my best trick is just that, trickery – I will drag my feet out of my warm, cosy house resolving to only run for 15 minutes or just do a couple sets of push ups – setting the bar low makes it easier to start. And once I spring into movement, the first 15 minutes fly by and all of the sudden, I am half way through a 90 minute run or I’ve finished an entire weight workout. Overthinking your workouts too can just kill motivation – letting the prospect of my workout later hang over my head seems to make me feel lazier. Nike was right ‘just do it’ – put your brain on auto-pilot, pull your sportsbra on and just get out there. I like to think of my body as a machine, one without a brain – I deactivate my brain and just let my body move. That sounds rather weird, I know – but an almost robotic approach to exercise really works for me. I have no choice, my body needs to move, so I let it move without thought, without that endless stream of thoughts that tell me it’s too cold, or I’m too tired or too sore or maybe I’m getting sick or how it’s important to rest. So while we always have the choice, to work out or not, put your brain on mute and let your body decide.
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