One of this biggest challenges my clients face is maintaining motivation, this isn’t unique to athletes and training, it’s apparent across all types of people in all aspects of life. So how do some people seem to have this amazing drive and stay motivated no matter what? Well I am about to let you into some of the secrets that I personally use and I normally only share with my clients and athletes. A few weeks ago, I wrote about and how important mindset is in the pursuit of success. Motivation and focus are a part of that big puzzle, a very important part, so understanding how to maintain motivation and focus is absolutely crucial to your personal success in any pursuit.
I don’t claim to be the perfect example of motivation and focus, I often look at some people and go damn I wish I had your level of commitment but then I look a little deeper and see what they have sacrificed to have that level of drive which leads us to the first secret.
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. It’s an old saying and I’m sure we have all heard it before and plenty of people try to do both but it just does not work. Understanding the sacrifice you will have to make to achieve your goal is one of the most important factors when setting those goals to begin with. For example, if you want to win a competition but don’t have time to practice because you are out drinking with your mates then you aren’t going to win. So the sacrifice in that scenario is a certain aspect of your social life. The benefit is that you now have more time to practice and train and are more likely to achieve your goal of winning.
I remember when I first started as a trainer and many of my clients were general population not athletes. A common excuse I used to hear was ‘I just can’t afford training it costs too much’. Mind you, they would go out every weekend and spend $200+ on drinks and food. Which is fine, if that’s what you want to do. However, at the end of the day do you really need to do that? Will your life suffer immensely if you reduce that to once a fortnight and then spend the saved money on improving your health and wellness? I think not.
That is the first mistake they made and why they will never achieve their health and fitness goals because they did not recognise the sacrifice they would have to make when they were setting their goals. If they had then it may not have caught them off guard causing them to quit. Which leads us to the next secret.
Goal setting. This goes hand in hand with understanding sacrifice and is a pretty obvious one, you can’t achieve a goal if you don’t know what it is. Now I’m not talking goals like oh I want to be good at what I do and whatever happens happens. Great you will be good, but you will never be the best. Which is fine for some people, many people are happy with mediocrity, or being ok at something, but even so, you still need to be specific. Without specificity you only have part of the picture, you are going in the right direction but you just don’t have a destination. The problem with that is that you never know when you achieve it so you don’t know when to either stop or set a new bigger goal.
Take for example four people in four cars starting in the middle of Australia.
The first person with no goal or direction just starts driving and they end up somewhere on the Western Australia coast, is it where they wanted to be? Maybe, but probably not.
The next person goes ok I want to head east (which is the same as saying ’I want to be good at what I do’) ok great they have a direction and start going east and they go as far east as they can and end up in Byron bay, cool spot but is it really what they wanted? Kind of but maybe not.
The next person goes I want to head to Brisbane (which is the same as saying ’I want to be the best at what I do’), so they head off and drive into Brisbane then they get there, and then what do they do? There are so many options, cool place and heaps of opportunities but now what?
Then the last person goes ’I’m going to drive to 127 Creek Street in the Brisbane CBD and train with Cam from Actionsport Performance’ (a very specific goal) and guess what? That is exactly what they do.
All seems straight forward, but what if the goal is really big and you struggle to work out how to get there? For example, what if there was a fifth person that did not have a car at all but had the same goal as the fourth person, to train with me. Then that person would need to set a series of smaller goals and think outside the box as to how they were going to achieve that goal. Hitchhike, steal a car, catch and ride a kangaroo, get a job and buy a car, it does not really matter what they do but the point is they need to set smaller intermediate goals to achieve the big goal, which leads on to the next secret.
Breaking it down. Breaking a big goal down into smaller goals is a way to move towards your ultimate goal in manageable smaller steps. This factor becomes very apparent when rehabilitating from injuries where at times it might seem impossible to be as fit and healthy as you were before especially if there is complications (which is the next secret) or the injury draws out. By setting smaller more achievable goals along the way with rehabilitation, you get small victories to help keep you motivated and moving forward.
This can be applied to any goal, and can help overcome perceived roadblocks turning them into small speed humps or slight detours before getting back on track, which leads us on to our next secret.
Overcoming roadblocks. Sometimes tasks can seem unimaginable, I mean how could YOU ever achieve THAT? Then even if you try, what if THIS goes wrong? Well frankly so what if it does, I mean sometimes things happen. Roadblocks are fine, they aren’t the end of the journey it just means you may need to take a slight detour before getting back on track.
Take for example when I was first getting my head around flipping my dirtbike. The first ever attempt to dirt I rotated perfectly but came up a little short on the landing. I was slammed into the handlebars broke a few ribs then was tossed to the ground. I could have given up, but instead I healed and went to try again.
When building the setup to do it at my good friend Adam Bayard’s house I stopped off to help my cousin fix some furniture and when I was leaning over the rail on the balcony it broke and I fell over the edge shattering my femur and breaking my wrist when I landed on the concrete below. Five months later I could ride again, so what did I do? I drove to Jacko Strong’s house to flip into the foam pit, mind you this is now about 8 months since my initial attempt at flipping. After doing a handful of flips into the pit I felt confident with flipping but not with my body so I decided to leave it for this trip.
Five months later I returned to Jacko’s did five flips into the pit and then went to dirt successfully. It had now been over a year since my initial attempt to dirt. There were several massive roadblocks along the way. However, with the end goal in mind of back flipping my dirtbike (which was a minor goal of my big picture goal) I found ways to overcome them and succeeded.
Are you starting to see how all this ties together to help maintain motivation and focus? Always keep the end goal in mind and be specific, break your end goal down into smaller more achievable goals to keep progressing, and roadblocks are just problems you have not found a solution too yet.
All of this is really just starting to scratch the surface and I use much more in depth techniques to help my athletes maintain motivation and focus. Use what you have read to stay motivated and achieve more, remember you are responsible for what actions you take and what you achieve in your life. If you would like to know more about how you can do more and achieve more from your sport, body and life make your first goal to head over to my contact page and send me a message now.
Train hard and be safe.
Your strength coach,
Cam