If you’ve ever joined a gym, admit it, you joined so you could look better.
This is why the majority of people join gyms, and there is nothing wrong with this at all.
Unfortunately, though, most of these people never achieve long-term results.
So why do these people fail and how do we achieve long-term results?
It’s because the focus is in the wrong area.
When we focus on external things such as our status, appearance, reputation etc we can lose motivation and fail.
When we focus on internal things such as how we feel, our health, and training for the enjoyment of it, we gain sustainable motivation and tend to achieve more results.
This article will explore the differences between internal and external motivation and let you know why you should focus on training to FEEL good if you want long-term results.
ARe you being driven by ‘internal’ drives or ‘external’ drives?
As discussed in this article about motivation, motivation is the energy that allows us to create change in our lives. Without this energy, we don’t feel the need to change anything in our lives, and we can find ourselves failing at achieving goals.
There are generally two types of motivation that psychologists talk about, these are INTRINSIC motivation and EXTRINSIC motivation.
We can think of these motivations as internal or external.
When we are intrinsically motivated, we will do something for the sake of doing it. Because we enjoy that thing.
If we are externally motivated, we are doing something for the result, even if we don’t enjoy the thing.
How Extrinsic Motivation works
Extrinsic motivation refers to us being motivated to achieve things that are external to us. When we are being extrinsically motivated, we are performing something either to avoid a punishment/pain or to get a result. This means, if we weren’t working towards the results/avoiding of pain, we wouldn’t normally enjoy or perform the behaviour.
“I can only manage to get results when my buddy is consistently checking up on me, and I can’t afford a trainer”
Does this sound like you?
This is what an extrinsically motivated person would sound like!
They don’t enjoy training, yet they train because they feel guilty (self-punishment) when they don’t train, and they are chasing the reward (of looking better).
This form of motivation can be ineffective, it requires willpower at first, and unless the reward is great enough or frequent enough, people can give up before they get their rewards.
As changing your physical appearance can be challenging, many people run out of willpower before they reach this point, and fail at changing their lives.
This is a harsh reality, but fortunately, there are ways around this, and one of them in intrinsic motivation.
How Intrinsic Motivation works
Intrinsic motivation refers to things we are drawn to internally. These are behaviours that we do for the enjoyment or the appreciation of the behaviour itself.
“I love training, you feel so good afterwards, and I’m loving deadlifts lately”
If this is you, then you are intrinsically motivated.
Intrinsic motivation tends to produce longer-term results as it isn’t driven by willpower or the need for accountability by other people.
How To Create more intrinsic motivation
If the key to long-term change is to master intrinsic motivation, then what should you do?
Some of you may be saying
“I really don’t enjoy exercise, there is no way I could become intrinsically motivated”
This may be true, however, in my opinion, there is always a way to make an experience more enjoyable.
When it comes to training, there are so many variables that can contribute to creating an enjoyable training experience.
These include:
- The environment of the place you work out
- The people you train with
- The type of exercise you participate in
- The appreciation and understand of the exercises you are doing
- The music you listen to
The list can go on and on.
Our solution to this problem
Here at Strength and Motion Academy, we have realised that people struggle with achieving long term results.
Health is one of, if not the most important part of life, and if people don’t look after their health, it affects all areas of life.
We want people to enjoy training, and because of this, we created our entire gym to make people LOVE and WANT to come to the gym.
We removed mirrors, so people are no longer focused on appearance, and instead focused on the movements themselves.
By removing mirrors, there is less ego & vanity so the gym is a far more sociable and comfortable environment.
We run social events and seminars so members feel welcome and understand HOW training will improve their lives.
