Fitness Motivation: The Hardest Part? Staying Motivated

One of the ways that I fended off the monotony of graduate school is through sports. Back in high school and college, I played tennis and basketball which kept my frustration at bay and my stress levels low. There was something gratifying about feeling the slight soreness of my muscles and the exhaustion that usually came with a good work out that had me addicted and coming back for more.

My entire family was into sports. My father was a professional cricket player in college, my cousins played collegiate lacrosse, and my brother played basketball and soccer. I mainly stuck to basketball. I had also been a professional figure skater for eight years, but had left after a decision had to be made whether to pursue a path towards private coaching and home-schooling or going to high school, college and beyond. It no longer became feasible and while the path to the Olympics was nice, it was not something my parents imagined was realistically going to happen, given the likelihood of how many do make it for the prestigious world-wide event.

However, I never left sports and continued to pursue it in college. Now in graduate school, I spend my days going to the gym after lab and strength training, in addition, to picking up boxing/MMA. I didn't even go to the gym to tone my body or exercise unfavorable parts about me away, but rather to relieve the stress of the work week. It soon became a habit and since then, I would head to the gym.

Eventually, overtime it got boring, doing the same things over and over again. Every now and then I would try and switch it up from doing a bit of cardio, to boxing/MMA, to swimming, to strength training in the weight room, but even that got old. There was a point where it became so boring, I really wanted to venture to do something else, but I kept at it.

How? In sports, even if you couldn't tolerate it, my coaches did teach me one thing. You have to have discipline and keep at it. Yes, there are some days that I don't even want to haul my ass to the gym, but I do because I know I would feel better about it tomorrow. There was always time to rest later, but pushing yourself and challenging yourself is the only way you're ever going to get better. You don't know what you're capable of if you don't test yourself first.

And even if you fail at it the first time, it's not the failure that impacts how you achieve your goals, it's what you do from that failure or what you learn from that failure that marks how resilient and intelligent you are. In my humble opinion, the only truly stupid people in this world are those who don't learn from their past mistakes. The level of analysis, understanding, and reflection it takes to measure out an earlier failure in order to succeed later in life at the same task, takes more brain power and speaks volumes of the kind of character one is than if someone were to fail to acknowledge something from their failure they could readily improve on.

So what does this have to do with staying motivated in the gym? Well, I realized later that my reason for going to the gym was just as much of a reflection of a period in my life that I was determined to work through. There are some weeks that my job was so utterly boring that I desired to look into something else, turn down a different avenue, and there were some days where I have to perform undesirable experiments, where the daunting task of doing so turned me off to starting them to begin with. However, the discipline forced me to stay on track and the days I felt like hitting something with a baseball bat were few and far between as I learned to let the small stuff go and focus on the bigger picture. I stay motivated because I want to get my PhD. I stay motivated because I want to be able to showcase my basketball-, boxing-toned body. Plus, the litter of booty pics on Instagram helps to motivate me. When I am blasted with pictures and media with women showcasing tightly-toned bodies, it somehow encourages me to go.

So if you're feeling unmotivated, I would say remember why you're doing what you're doing, whether it be going to school to finish, pursuing a career track to a promotion, or gritting your teeth through a rough patch in your life, look at the bigger picture and note that all the trivial things don't even compare. Don't sweat the small stuff and maybe looking to those around you, the ones who influence you positively and even pictures of your inspiration, may provide the necessary motivation for you to get your butt out of bed, sofa, or from your apartment and head to the gym.

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