Article: Renewing motivation to train

Do you look forward to your time set aside for physical training? No? Not often? If so you’re probably normal. Sometimes it does take discipline – a supreme effort of the will over inner resistance and external sabotage. But what can we do to make exercise fun and so increase our motivation to train?

Once upon a time I think it came to us more naturally. It was called “playing” or “mucking about”. I remember a (clearly unsupervised) occasion when some friends and I used a blackboard and lane marker rope to surf in a swimming pool. One fellow stood atop the blackboard holding one end of the rope, the others pulled on the rope and provided him with the forward propulsion he needed to plane the length of the pool. It was merry and we all had a comprehensive cardio-vascular work-out which helped hone our proprioception.

Let’s be creative. Here are some ideas. I hope at least one of them will help you boost your motivation to train. None of them will necessarily involve breaking the law or being irresponsible:

• Belief. Our self-identity affects our behaviour. We don’t become an athlete by training like an athlete, we train like an athlete by becoming an athlete. There are lots of ways of developing our identity (some of them weird and most of them embarrassing) but the best involve verbalisation or meditation. Try this simple experiment: Time yourself running around a short circuit. As you do say to yourself, over and over, “I am a slug”. Repeat, this time saying, “I am a hungry cheetah”. Compare times.

• Music. Research shows that music can improve performance and training intensity. Warning: Several admissions to A&E show that it can also drown out the sound of approaching motor vehicles and other useful information.

• Maximise return on time invested by multi tasking. Achieve something else as you train. I know someone who wanted to collect some paving slabs. By securely lashing two hornbeam spars to a loading trolley he created a miniature ox cart which he attached to himself using a rucksack as a yoke. Fine resistance training. He thus achieved at least two objectives without damaging his back, the planet or some paintwork by loading them into a car.

• Company. Benefit from the inspiration and encouragement of others – join a club, find a training partner...

• Combine it with your efforts to look after the place. Leave the car at home, put on a rucksack, pop to that out of town supermarket and fetch home a few months supply of pasta and rice.

• Invest time in planning. Next time you’re with a like minded friend start idea storming new and interesting activities. Most of them will be unrealistic but you’ll enjoy the conversation and from it a few useful ideas might just sprout.

• Make it harder. E.g. if pull ups are easy try pull ups with a heavy rucksack.

• Do it somewhere interesting. Why fall asleep road running when you could be finding new footpaths? Why visit the pool when there are lakes and rivers you can swim in? Have you ever tried playing squash in a phone box? Web search for "playing squash in public" for advice and a jolly good chuckle.