Jenniffer Merida photo
TRAINING
By: Frank Gigante
Natural Pro
Motivation
W
e see memes, images, and quotes all over social media
these days. I know personally, some of them speak to
me and help narrow my focus on various tasks, goals, or even
just reframing my perspective for the day. Oddly enough for all of
the motivational content ever so readily available at our fingertips,
the biggest complaint I hear from people struggling to incorporate
health and fitness into their lifestyle is lack of motivation.
I am willing to go out on a limb here, and propose that motivation is intrinsic. It comes from within. Often it is not motivation
that is lacking, but rather there are other forces at work that keep
people from fulfilling their goals. Knowledge, confidence, and
accountability are perhaps the big three when it comes to the real
stumbling blocks that keep people from taking action to reach new
accomplishments.
When working with people at various stages of their fitness
journeys, I have found I cannot truly motivate them into action. I
can however, stir something that is already inside of them and turn
their intrinsic motivation, that they often didn’t know they had, into
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Natural Muscle Magazine
Do you have it? Do you need it?
concrete, practical, and repeatable actions. That call to action is
more of a form of inspiration than motivation. The motivation was
there. It was just clogged and lost behind a few roadblocks.
Perhaps you have heard people state a goal and then quickly
negate it. For example, “I want to lose 10 pounds, but I just don’t
have the motivation to get back in the gym.” Wait! What?? The
motivation is in that first half of the sentence – they want to lose
weight! That is a goal. Their motivation may come from something
else such as fitting in a favorite pair of jeans, or seeing their abs.
The focus is that they already have the desire, the drive to want to
change and improve. The motivation is there. The question now
becomes how to bring it out and turn that into action.
Below are 5 Building Blocks that I use often for
myself and when talking with others, to help
remove those walls and challenges that stand in
the way of bringing out our motivated selves and
chasing our smallest or largest goals.
May 2015
1. Anything new is hard.
Let’s get this one out of the way right now. We all begin from the
beginning. It doesn’t matter who you are, or what the task is we all
start at the same point. Now, we are not all at the same point, at
the same time, but we all did start from the same place, in that we
were all beginners.
This is perhaps the greatest wall that holds us back. If we have
never done an exercise before, or been in a gym, or paid attention
to how we ate, the mere thought of suddenly going from nothing
to completely in, can be an obstacle in itself. To overcome this,
it is important to give yourself permission to learn. Even if it is
something as simplistic as trying a new exercise, allow yourself to
learn the technique and gain the knowledge about it before you
ever pick up a weight to do it. Then, once you begin, use a light
weight and take some time (sometimes weeks) getting to know the
form and feel of the movement. Be sure it is hitting the right area of
the muscles. Notice how your muscles feel at each position of the
movement. Little by little, as you gain an understanding of proper