We have all heard that motivation is the most significant predictor of success. High motivation brings preparation which brings results.
For many athletes, motivation is hard to find and hard to keep. While it's well known that motivation maintenance requires breaking habits and behavior patterns, motivation can also be an internal drive that promotes action.
Although it is great to feel this pressure to perform, it's important that you are able to put in the work, in the face of obstacles, fatigue, boredom, stress and distractions to do other things, all the time. In other words, your motivation to train in January, February and March should be just as strong as your motivation to train in May, June and July.
If you have found yourself saying that you are motivated to train to reach performance goals but you can't seem to translate your words into action, I encourage you to explore your unique motivation that drives you to work toward your goals.
Instead of lowering your goals to match your struggling motivation, boost your effort to reach your goals.
To help find the motivation to change or to reach your goals, you need to maintain your effort even when you want to give up or when it's hard to get started.
Because we all have our own drivers for motivation as it relates to training, I'd like to share a personal story from Karel and how he puts in the work to train, even when motivation is low.
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It is understandable to feel a lack of motivation in the cold winter months, especially if you live in a place where there is not much community support or friends who do the same sport and have similar goals as you do.
We all go through these stages of not feeling the motivation to train and we try to use all kinds of tricks to make us put in the work. When I get into the state of low motivation, I often refer back to time when I was injured with the tear in my plantar fascia and couldn't train or race. I was miserable all summer in 2015 and I would have given anything for the ability just go for a slow jog.
I went to Lake Placid in July, which was suppose to be my big Ironman race of the season before my first IM Kona in October, and being surrounded by several of our Trimarni athletes, I tried to be supportive and be a good coach for our athletes. But deep inside, I was struggling.
Pulling out after only swimming and biking was hard. Very hard. I had never dealt with anything like that before.
Now, when I feel like not doing much, I look back at that time and use it as the extra power and motivation that I need to get myself to start and finish a workout. Because I CAN. I don't have an injury that prevents me from working out. I'm not in pain. I'm healthy.
Everyone is different and different things work for different athletes.
I hope my story can motivate other athletes to help them build on past fitness developments in order to accomplish even greater things in the near future.
I hope my story can motivate other athletes to help them build on past fitness developments in order to accomplish even greater things in the near future.
