Saturday, April 6, 2013

WHAT'S MY MOTIVATION?


Do you have a video that gets you amped to go to the gym?  A go to music track you gotta blast before you walk in the doors?  A pre-workout concoction that is guaranteed to make you want to smash some weights?

Why?


"I thought it seemed obvious"

Is training such a miserable experience that you need to psyche yourself up to do it?  Is the reward of being stronger and better not enough motivation?  Is getting you to the gym like getting a kid to eat their veggies, requiring many gimmicks and theatrics?

I'm not here to judge, simply to wonder.  I cannot pretend to understand your experience or perspective, but instead just offer up my own.  I don't like to train.  It's not something I would willingly do.  If given the choice between training and a hot dog eating contest, the hot dogs win every time.


Pictured: My Id

Why do I train then?  Because I want to be strong.  It is the thing I live for.  My first coherent memories as a child are of wanting to be strong.  I grew up hearing stories of men with great strength overcoming adversity and fighting off monsters, watched movies where a strong man was able to fight off many attackers and accomplish great feats, and played games where I could be the strongest being possible.  If I had 3 wishes, I'd wish to be the strongest being to ever exist 3 times.  It's what I want.

I have a goal, and this goal IS the motivation.  Training is the method, and I employ it to reach my goal.  If I need motivation to train, it means I have picked the wrong goal.  You have to want this bad enough that you are willing to suffer the adversity necessary to obtain it.  If the goal isn't worthy enough, it's simply going to be a chore.

This is why concrete goals are necessary for training.  New Year's resolutions folks that just want to "get in shape" fade away, because there is nothing to chase.  If "being in shape" really was your life's purpose, you wouldn't be out of shape in the first place, so it's clearly not a high priority.

Now, is my goal of simply "being strong" a clearly defined goal?  No, but it is a driving force and motivating factor.  Instead, I have picked a concrete goal that, in obtaining, will make me strong.  For me personally, I want to deadlift 800lbs.  If I can do this, I will have reached a level of strength that I consider "inhuman".  That said, I imagine that once I accomplish this, I will still not feel that I have become "strong", and will set another absurd goal.


"Mind if I work in?"

Powerlifting is also beneficial in this capacity.  When I have a meet on the horizon, I am in very good shape.  At my most recent meet, I was walking around with a full set of abs.  Without a meet in my future, I have allowed myself to get soft.  Being honest with myself, I don't want abs bad enough to do what it takes to always have them, but when I have the opportunity to crush records, I will do what it takes, which means eating nothing but ground beef and mixed veggies and passing up the pizza and desserts whenever they are offered to me.  And every time I passed up eating something delicious, I told myself "this is what a record breaking total tastes like".  That, in and of itself, was enough to keep me going.

Is it for you?

7 comments:

  1. "If I had 3 wishes, I'd wish to be the strongest being to ever exist 3 times:

    I love this quote.

    And blog.

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  2. I was contemplating this today as I completed my second 5 mile run in under an hour. Lap 16 can be summarized as "i'm only halfway done with this shit?" And lap 28 was pretty much "i realize the only reason i keep at it is im just too disciplined to not see it through". Lap 32 got done and it was pretty much "being able to run at this pace when i previously could not is why i keep at it"

    My goals, once i realized how valuable it was, was to just be able to endure. Continuously, and at a pace thats sensible.

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  3. Hello. I hope you don't mind (I guess necro-commenting?). I hope that I can supply a different perspective.

    I can answer yes to all of your initial questions. The reason is simple. Conditions shift and these things are tools that can help me get the experience that I am expecting in the gym.

    Sometimes I bring just a water into the gym and that's all I need. But sometimes I am sluggish and so I bring caffeine or something even more "energizing".

    I usually listen to moderate paced rock when I lift. The music is used sometimes, allowing me to just kind of focus on the lifts and meditate on it instead of letting my thoughts cloud my performance.

    As for your statement about the goal being the motivation, that is simplistic. Sure the goal is enough to get me in the gym but we all have outside forces that damage motivation and focus. Sometimes, the desire is strong enough to win out. And sometimes the outside forces can damage your motivation, focus or even the desire that got you into the gym in the first place.

    Sometimes lifting is the highlight of my day...and sometimes it is miserable. And sometimes it is even both. But the object of the exercise is making my goals, not to be miserable. I am looking to get strong, not prove that I am capable of wallowing in sucky things for their own sake. I see the merit of pushing myself, grinding out a weight that I have never done. But it doesn't mean that I am going to punch myself in the crotch to really make my squats a challenge.

    So if any tool will allow me to make a more pleasant experience without compromising my goal, then I would be a fool not to use it.

    So in short, I use motivators for the same reason that I don't allow cell phones in the gym. It works to produce better results.

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  4. "So if any tool will allow me to make a more pleasant experience without compromising my goal, then I would be a fool not to use it."

    This is very much in conflict with how I approach training, and I imagine, in turn, our differing philosophies on the matter necessitate differing approaches.

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    Replies
    1. Having been a reader of your posts for some time I can say that we converge in many areas and differ in many areas. I am a fan of imposed hardships but I have to see how each is relevant for me to determine its worth. I don't do hardships for their own sake, I select my hardship based on what I want to achieve.

      By way of example, I didn't own a bed until my wife pressured me to buy one. Having never grown used to a bed, I never had the need for one. That was a (lack of) comfort that I very much enjoyed. But after a few years, she no longer could and I had to choose between having a bed or sleeping alone. The hardship of sleeping alone wasn't one in which I had an interest, and therefore I now have a bed.

      As a matter of curiosity, what would you say is the greatest hardship you have imposed upon yourself? Is it greater than the greatest hardship that life threw at you? And is there a hardship that you like the idea of but cannot bring yourself to commit to?

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  5. Upon further reflection I need to amend my previous post but I can't see a place to edit it. I don't think I impose hardships as much on myself as detachments. Like I go through every so often and give away many of my possessions. I preferred sleeping without a bed, etc. I don't really make it hard on myself, just I don't like being attached to things to where I feel dependent on them.

    ReplyDelete