What's Your Motivation?

After being a personal trainer for over 12 years, I have realized that no matter how good the exercise program I write up and the exercises that I do with clients, that people still don't get all the results that they want. Upon saying that, some might think that the program is flawed or that there is a missing link. What I have found to be the majority of people's problem is a clear lack of motivation. When I say motivation, they will show up and do the things that we need to do in the gym but after they leave the gym something else happens. It's like outside of the gym, the goals that they had set to accomplish physically implode. I blame this on a not so strong motivation.  Motivation is what drives someone to do something. Motivation can be both intrinsic and extrinsic. Intrinsic motivation is what comes from within or what people will do without external inducement. People who do things for the interest and enjoyment that accompanies an activity are intrinsically motivated. Malone and Lepper (1987) came up with a synthesis of factors to motivate people intrinsically in which they subdivide the factors into individual factors and interpersonal factors. I will discuss some of these factors and how they pertain to health and fitness. The first factor is challenge. Using this factor, people are best motivated when they are working toward personally meaniful goals which are attained by doing an activity continously with a moderate level of difficulty.  An example of this can be anyone beginning an exercise program or activity which they are not skilled in or accostumed to but as time goes on, they become more acclimated or accostumed to that skill and they need to be challenged with more progressively harder workouts or introduced to a new set of skills.  The second factor is curiosity. Curiosity can be achieved through the senses or cognitively. A good example of this is by having a person to stand on one leg and then tossing them a tennis ball directly to them or towards the outside of the body or lower portion of the body (spatial awareness).  An advanced way of using curiosity is by doing the same exercise above while keeping one eye shut. This challenges the body's spatial awareness even more and stresses the cognitive senses more too. The third factor is control which means that we want control of what happens. This is probably the biggest factor in terms of intrinsic motivation whether you are exercising, working or in life in general. When dealing with the control factor, people have to understand that there is a cause and effect relationship between what they are doing and what happens in real life. An example using health and fitness is eating and drinking too many calories(cause) over a period of time which leads to unhealthy weight gain (effect). I tell my clients and people all the time that if you don't exercise any control or discipline when it comes to eating, you are leaving everything to chance and you will not be able to  successfully manage your weight. The fourth factor is fantasy. Fantasy uses mental images of things and situations that are not actually present to stimulate behavior. A good example of this is to envision how you would look with the added weight off and how much better you would feel and the extra attention that you would receive from people because you have lost the weight. Now lets focus on extrinsic motivation. Extrinsic motivation is when you are motivated by tangible rewards or pressures rather than doing things just for fun. An extrinsically motivated person does things because they feel like they have to and really don't enjoy it. I personally believe that more has been made about extrinsic motivation for people exercising than actually enjoying exercise for the sake of exercise. That might also be one of the reasons why a majority of Americans don't exercise now. They haven't found the joy in exercise like a child might find in just playing which is also exercise. Extrinsic motivation will have you believe that it's all about hot bods and hot guys and girls. If you don't want to be hot like that then a person might feel alienated by people in a gym setting. The problem with extrinsic motivation from the "hot bods and hot girls" viewpoint is that it is only very superficial.  To further this example would be when these same people got married (exercised only to attract a mate and then stopped some time afterwards or no longer viewed exercise as being of importance. It was viewed as superficial only). Exercise then becomes an afterthought until years or decades later. I'm not saying that exercise should encompass one's life but it should be a core value for everyone. After all, if you don't have your health, you end up spending your wealth on your health! If you are not motivated by going to a gym, that's not the end of the world. You must find an activity that you like, love, or have fun doing and let working out enhance that activity that you enjoy. That is when you can feel and see the difference that working out has on that activity but also ease in doing normal day to day physical tasks. Vanity is a good extrinsic motivational factor but in the end your true motivation will come from within. So what's your motivation?