How to keep yourself motivated!

Normally, at this point in the season, I have finished your first training camp somewhere in the south and I would probably be in my last weeks of prep for the first race of the season. For the past year, everything has changed. It is hard to motivate yourself when there is no definite date and very often comes the question: What am I doing all this for?

And that is what I want to talk about in this blog post:

How do I keep my motivation high, despite there being no competitions to look forward to.

As you could read in my last blog, I have “only” been training at KickAss Sports since mid-December. In the past year I have had an intense schedule of everyday training, which mainly consisted of running and cycling. If I’m being completely honest, I had a huge motivation hole shortly before my switch of training. I questioned my training every day.

For me, the change of coach brought something new and exciting. New insights, influence, units and a wide variety of sports made my training more interesting for me and therefore easier to implement in everyday life. I’m generally a very hard-working person and don’t have to force myself to put on my sports clothes and get started. But with the new influence and tasks that came up in my new training plan, I found the fun in my training again.

Failure can also have a motivating effect….​

In the meantime I have been training in the new team for a good 3 months, you might think the units have become routine by now. But wait! It’s not like that … I have new challenges every week and I grow with them. I had to learn to break off a unit from time to time and to go to the limit of my performance. It’s hard to accept at first, especially when you’re such an ambitious person as I am. Perhaps some of you might understand. You actually want to complete every unit perfectly. My guidance for people: Get up, straighten the crown and deliver it all the better the next time.

That’s exactly what gives me a boost in motivation. If you manage the unit that you did not manage the first time, it triggers a little happiness in each of us and if you do not finish off a unit like you wished to do, it motivates you even more.

Variety for the head …

Not only hard units are new and challenging in my training plan. I find it particularly nice that I can or may incorporate things like ski touring or trail running. Thanks to my trainer, my training plan is then adjusted spontaneously and I can get started. Anyone who knows me, knows that I love the mountains and that such units mean less training for me. Also, they mean freedom, fun and pure happiness. So to speak, I can achieve the right training effect for my body and at the same time regenerate my head.

Regeneration … isn’t that boring and really that important?

Until recently, I didn’t think that rest had such a big impact on training, performance, and motivation. Now, these elements play a decisive role in my everyday training. My week is not crammed with training units, on the contrary: I also have time for myself and for relaxation. I can only tell you: The performance has been steadily increasing since I’ve been giving my body some rest. (You can find more about this in the blog post https://kickasssports.de/ohne-ruhepause-keine-leistungsstieg/) Who would have thought that I would do yoga on a regular basis!

The secret recipe​

I don’t think there is a single secret recipe to keep your motivation consistently high. Rather, everyone can put together their own from the various “ingredients”. Because, as in all areas, we are all individuals with different needs. 

With the help of the new team, I have found mine, I think: You will notice that with a lot of variety in training, I never get bored. I look forward to my training, the hard units as well as the quiet ones every day. So I can only recommend you to bring a high variability of units into your training and not just focus on swimming, cycling and running. If you feel that it will  get boring sometimes, talk about it before it’s too late.

If my motivation drops, I try to keep my big goals in mind: The professional license that I am seeking for, so if a race date is determined, I am ready at any given time. Usually a single thought is enough! So my advice for most: Have a goal that motivates you ?!

Who knows … maybe the first race is a lot closer than we think …