Help! I Have No Motivation To Workout

I-Have-No-Motivation-To-Workout

This is the most common struggle we hear from our MerryBody Members. It’s the most common reason why people fail in their movement and exercise goals. Can you relate? Do you often say the words…

I Have No Motivation To Workout

We’re going to take a wild guess (because you’re reading this article) and say YES, you do struggle. That you do lack the motivation to maintain a consistent exercise routine.

Well, good news for you! Keep reading because we have all the tips and tricks to change this. The best part, all the advice we’re about to share is simple. But firstly, let’s define ‘motivation’.

noun
a reason or reasons for acting or behaving in a particular way.
 
So, motivation is the reason that drives your action. 
 
So if you want to ‘hack your motivation’ when it comes to exercise you need to go inwards to figure out what exactly your reasons are for exercising.
 
Our personal preference and what we recommend is not to focus on weight loss. It’s not advice you’ll hear from many fitness experts.
 
We do this because, between the 2 of us, we have a history of dieting, disorderly eating and a hyper-focus on weight loss. This behaviour led us to lose too much weight too fast, which led to a hormone mess, low energy and a whole heap of diet-induced stress. We constantly felt anxious when we swayed from our ‘rules’. There was no internal peace. Sure at some stages we got to that goal weight but our mental health was a complete mess. 
 
We talk about the topic of weight loss and why it’s not a great motivator for exercise over here. 
 
And this leads us to our first tip.
 

How to Create Motivation to Workout

 

1. Find your WHY

Alright, take a moment and think of all the goodness that a consistent workout brings to your life. If you’ve never had a consistent workout, use your imagination. Then pick out your top 3. If you are struggling to think of any WHYs take one of the below!

  • Mood lifter: regular exercise puts me in a better mood. I am more patient with my family.
  • Confidence builder: consistent exercise helps me feel more confident about myself. I show up to important meetings with less anxiety. 
  • Injury preventer: as I age I want to maintain my muscle mass and strength. This will allow me to live my life with more freedom and not rely on others. 
  • I just feel better: I’m way less stressed. I feel happier and healthier in my mind and my body. The simple act of daily movement (even if it’s just 10 minutes) makes me feel better. That’s the only reason I need!

Lastly, we want to remind you… exercise is an important contributor to your health, longevity and quality of life. For us, we want to be active 90-year-olds! We know we can’t control everything, however, we can control our movement.

no-motivation-to-workout

2. Choose a method that suits you

Take the time and look at your life, your schedule, your financial situation and other commitments. If you’ve only got 30 minutes each day then the fancy new studio in the city (25 minutes away plus car parking time) is not right for you. If you’re on a tight budget, the $40 reformer class is not right either. If you have a super stressful job and you’re already feeling burnt out, don’t go for high intensity workouts, this will only lead to more burnout! 

In Summary:

  • Choose a method of exercise that fits into your schedule with ease.
  • Find a workout that supports your mental health as well as your physical health.
  • Do the workout that fits within your budget.

When you take the above into account you will reduce many potential excuses that will stop you from working out. Ooooh, now, isn’t this smart! 

If any of the above scenarios do sound like your life… we’d highly suggest online workouts. They’re easy to fit into a busy schedule. They’re far more cost-effective than in-person classes and there are so many options to choose from! Look for the best method to suit YOU! We love Yoga and Pilates!

3. JFDI aka just freaking do it

It’s time to be stronger than your excuses. We are not saying your excuse is not valid, but it’s still an excuse getting in the way of your exercise. Consider your WHY, look at your schedule and life situation and just freaking do it. 

We don’t care if your first workout is a 2 minute walk up the street.
We don’t care that you are 3 steps behind in the Yoga class.
We don’t care that you need to squeeze your at home Pilates class across 3 x 10-minute blocks each day. 

Look at YOUR life and make it work for YOU.

It doesn’t need to be perfect, you don’t need the Lululemon yoga pants, they are our favourite, but in fact, half the time we do our Yoga in shorts in the living room (another great reason for at home Yoga, you can wear shorts with no one seeing your bum!).

Yes, of course, life does have chapters. Perhaps you’re caring for a sick loved one, maybe you just gave birth, perhaps you are sick or maybe you’re going through a hard time. During these times focus on your mental health. This might mean meditation, resting, therapy, dance classes, nature walks or maybe it means running! We all have different ways to deal with these times.

And of course, if you do have physical ability constraints (whether temporary or permanent) this is when we’d recommend you work with an expert exercise physiologist one-on-one.  

4. Pretend you are a motivated person

Think of someone who is one of those motivated to exercise kinda people. Now, pretend you are too.  Hehe, this is kind of a joke but it might just work! Let their behaviour inspire you. Let them guide you.

If the person you are thinking of is a gym junkie, protein shake drinking, calorie counting type (hehe no offence if that is you 😘) and you don’t want that… then use us as your inspiration. 

We wake up every day wanting to exercise and we never dread it. Sometimes we walk, sometimes we do Yoga and other days Pilates. Some days we do all three! The point is, they are methods of exercise that we LOVE!

We don’t count calories and we don’t do diets, but we are mindful of eating healthy delicious food. We absolutely still eat pasta and gelato, not every day but there are no diets in disguise here! 

We were not always like this, in the past (as we’ve already mentioned) we did try all the diets and we chose to do workouts with weight loss in front of mind. This led us to choose workouts that we didn’t enjoy, this created dread and an unhappy relationship with exercise! 

Do we have 6 packs? No. Are our muscles perfectly defined? No. Do we feel healthy and happy? YES. 

Alright, now it’s time to make your plan! 

If you’re not sure where to begin we’d highly recommend, you download our MerryBody app and activate your 7 day trial. Then we’d suggest you tune into our Motivation Masterclass inside the App! 

If you have any questions, get in touch, we are here to help! 

Always merrymaking,
Emma + Carla

Scroll to Top