Struggling with Finding Motivation to Do Workouts? Here’s What to Do. - Coach Tip Tuesday

January and February can be rough months for endurance athletes, though I’d make the case that January seems to be the worst of the two.  Winter has fully settled in by the time January rolls in, and unlike the wintry months that preceded it (November and December), January doesn’t boast the warm coziness and comfort of the holidays where good food, gatherings, and merriment make time pass enjoyably and quickly and make the Winter season not only bearable, but enjoyable.  January is also a full 31 days long, while February only requires us to manage 28 days of Winter (well, 75% of the time, anyway).  February also brings the promise of Spring on the other side of it, while January is just, well.  Sandwiched right smack dab in the middle of most people’s least favorite season of the year.

The Winter Blues

While Winter is a beautiful season to some (including me…I love it), the truth of the matter is that it is a season that many, many people trudge, slog, and just get through.  Daylight is limited, sunshine is less abundant, temperatures are lower, and getting around is tougher.  As a result, many people retreat inwards and do not engage in the same behaviors or activities that they do when the sun is shining and the temperatures are warm.

For some people, these inward retreats are intentional.  For others, these retreats can better be described as something that happens to them at this time of year.  Either manifestation represents seasonality (behaviors and habits that change in alignment with specific, different time periods during the year).  In her beautiful book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, Katherine May strongly advocates for leaning into these periods, and to have them be replenishing for both the body and mind.  She also encourages us to observe how the other creatures who we share the planet with handle Winter:

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in summer.  They prepare.  They adapt.  They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.  [...]  Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”‍

This is wonderful advice, and it is true that we can prepare for impending Winters, instead of fighting them.  But what happens when we’re in the midst of Winter and find ourselves lacking motivation, ambition, or energy to do any of the activities or behaviors that once brought us joy?  What do we do then?

Over the years, I’ve encountered this feeling and situation.  It can feel pointless (if not downright impossible) to get going for a workout at this time of year.  As a coach, I have definitely watched many, many athletes face the same thing.  While The Fresh Start Effect of a new year can absolutely be motivating for some of the athletes who I coach and catalyze them into renewed energy to engage with workouts and their training, I find that there’s at least an equal number of athletes who don’t react this way.  Instead, they disengage and don’t complete many workouts at all.  These athletes are not alone; 58% of all people become less active during the Winter season. 

Unfortunately, this decrease in engagement with training is detrimental when it comes to successfully achieving endurance sports goals.  Maintaining consistency with workouts and training through the Winter and off-season is a vital part of setting any athlete up for the highest probability of successfully reaching endurance sports goals.

Success Doesn’t Happen Overnight

But as the character Morpheus says in The Matrix: “There’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”  You can intellectually understand all day long that doing workouts is important, that doing them now will help you get to where you want to go later, and that movement and/or exercise is the most impactful and significant behavioral intervention that someone can do to help both their mental and physical health.  But just because you intellectually understand this doesn’t mean that you will automatically be primed, ready, and willing to do something actionable about it.

As cliché as it sounds, success is only ever the tip of an iceberg.  It does not happen overnight.  It is not the result of a single, big breakthrough.  Instead, success is the summation of hundreds - if not thousands - of small choices, deeds, actions, and behaviors over time.  And thus, it starts with the small (perhaps seemingly insignificant), intentional choices you make every single day of your life.

So when you find yourself lost in a fog of wintry blues, don’t take on the all-too-common athlete mentality of “all or nothing”.  Something is better than nothing.  Start instead with small ideas and behaviors.  Does the idea of a workout seem entirely too much?  Choose something else that can help build toward getting back to workouts and to the longer-term goals that you’ve set for yourself, such as stretching or doing light yoga for 5-10 minutes a day, preparing a meal with leftovers that you can have throughout the week, or aiming to consume a sufficient amount of hydration in a day.  Does the idea of workouts seem unexciting to you?  Perhaps consider trying something new completely different from your endurance sport of choice, such as snowshoeing, indoor rock climbing, a group fitness class at the gym, strength training, or Pilates. 

As far as actual endurance sports workouts go: One of my favorite suggestions for athletes who are struggling with finding the motivation to do workouts for their primary sport is to just get started, for as little as five or ten minutes.  Hop on your bike, go for a run, swim a few laps…just for five or ten minutes.  And when you tell yourself that you’re going to do [insert workout type here] for five to ten minutes, also give yourself permission to stop after five to ten minutes.  If you tell yourself that you “only” need to do five or ten minutes, that can often make a workout feel less intimidating.  If you actually stop after five to ten minutes, great!  That’s five to ten minutes more than you probably would have done otherwise.

An Object in Motion Stays in Motion

But something sneaky happens when we take that initiative to get moving…it’s easier to keep moving.  “An object in motion stays in motion.”  Probably unbeknownst to him, Isaac Newton wasn’t only talking about physical actions.  It’s mentally easier for us to stay in motion once we get moving as well.  So if we effectively “trick” ourselves into getting moving for five to ten minutes, we often find that it’s easier to stay moving for a bit longer, maybe even for the full length of a workout.

It’s seemingly small decisions, habits, and behaviors like these that set the stage to come through a season of retreat and to reestablish consistency.  All too often, we mistakenly think that consistency means doing all the things, every day, all the time.  But that’s not what consistency is.  Consistency is showing up, some days more than others, a majority of the time.  And consistency doesn’t have a set volume; consistency can look like stretching for ten minutes a day three days a week, or it can look like doing hour-long workouts six days a week.  Neither is better or worse than the other; both embody the spirit of what is necessary to build positive and constructive habits and to see gains over time.  In other words: Showing up, doing the work, even if (and perhaps especially if) it feels slightly repetitious and boring is the foundation from which all successful goal achievement and mastery starts.

The Bottom Line

Winter may be a season where you struggle to do workouts and to make tractable progress toward your goals.  If you find yourself here, know that you are not alone.  Also know that the hardest day to do a workout is the day after you don’t do a workout…or the day after a longer period of time when you haven’t done workouts.  Understand that it’s going to feel challenging and hard.  And if it feels like it is too hard or too much, seek out something that feels more approachable, even if it doesn’t resemble your endurance sports workouts.  Start small, and let those little wins help you build to bigger wins over time.

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” -Albert Camus