Motivation - where do you get your drive to exercise?

by Maggie Vink (Subscribe to Maggie Vink's posts)
Nov 3rd 2008 4:00PM

Motivation is as critical to exercise as a good pair of workout shoes. I have to admit that my willpower for exercise fades from time to time. When it does, it's time to find a new source of motivation. Recently, my son and I came up with a plan so we can help motivate each other.

After my son's soccer season ended, he decided he wanted to take up running. Every day, he walks down to the high school track and then runs a mile. While I know a lot of my fellow writers at That's Fit enjoy running, for me it's just a form of slow torture. Instead, I'm opting to exercise with fitness DVDs in my living room. And here's how I'm keeping motivated: My son made punch cards for each of us -- he gets a punch for every mile, and I get a punch for every mile-equivalent. When we've both punched out a complete card, we get to go do something special. (Probably bowling ... my son loves to bowl.) Since we both have to finish our individual cards, we'll have to keep each other on track.

Health has an interesting article about five different women and their sources of motivation for exercise. Motivation can come in many forms -- how you feel after exercising, wanting to look good in that pair of skinny jeans, improving health, etc. What's your source of exercise motivation?

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... 11-03-2008 @ 10:18PM

I love video games. In particular, I play Dance Dance Revolution. It's somewhat like a puzzle game (much like Tetris), but played with feet (instead of fingers) while listening to great music (and even an announcer that cheers you on if you're doing well if you want to leave that option on). I consider it gaming, not exercising, but I still sweat far more playing that game than I've ever sweated before, even though I was on a soccer team during junior high and the varsity tennis team during high school.

There's just no motivation necessary when the activity is this much fun. Even when my body is exhausted, I find that I want to keep pushing it onwards because I want to make that A or unlock the next song or beat my previous score or even just get that very difficult syncopated run right this time.

On days when I'm just not up for fun, I just swap out the game out for Wii Fit or some other exertainment. Wii Fit is nice because keep a graph of the player's weight and amount of time spent playing. My weight loss had slowed drastically because I'm close to my ideal weight, so it's hard to see progress by just stepping on a bathroom scale. However, with Wii Fit's graph, I can see the line trending down ever so slightly, and being able to see that trend prevents me from being quite as tempted by unhealthy snacks.

Physical activity works better if it's fun for people. It's very inefficient for people to force themselves to go to the gym only to waste energy and make themselves miserable. When I pass by the window of gyms, the people often look like they're miserable and in pain. It's self-defeating. Unless people are true masochists, setting up a goal to force such misery on themselves seems to be just asking for failure.