There’s a tendency in the fitness world to only talk about how to train your body. Whilst that’s important, we also need to acknowledge the impact that our mental state has on our willingness/ability to train. In many ways, your physical fitness follows your mental fitness. If you can’t be bothered to exercise, you’re either not going to train at all, or you’re going to do a really half-baked workout.
Either way, you don’t win.
In this article we’re going to share five quick and simple strategies to employ to help you keep your mental fitness up. A strong mind precedes a strong body, so follow these tips to stay mentally fit as well as physically fit.
Tip #1 - Get enough sleep!
This one can’t be stressed enough. Sleep has a dramatic impact on your physical and mental fitness. It’ll help you control your cravings for unhealthy foods, it boosts your motivation and it protects your mental health. It also helps you to rejuvenate physically, which is important - if you’re tired, or your body feels under-recovered, you’re not going to want to train.
Shoot for 7-10 hours per night, depending on what your body needs. For more of our sleep tips, follow the guidance in our sleep blog post here.
Tip #2 - Set yourself realistic mini goals
When we embark on a fitness journey, there’s a temptation to look way into the future, setting ourselves huge goals that will take a long time to complete. The problem is here that we lose sight of the regular wins, and the big goal can seem so overwhelmingly long term that we can lose focus. Say for example you want to lose 30lbs (just over two stone), break it down into smaller chunks.
Don’t fixate on the 30lbs target, instead shoot for a smaller target of 7-10lbs per month (always set a range, because there’s a lot of factors that make up weight loss, so it’ll never be precise). Also, hit regular mini goals, such as 10k step per day. These small goals keep motivation high.
Tip #3 - Reward yourself
Exercise can seem like a constant battle of punishment and sacrifice - eating fewer treat foods, drinking less, sweating more, working hard. That’s all true - it’d be pointless (and a lie) to suggest that great results are possible without some level of sacrifice. That doesn’t mean that there are rewards along the way though. You can factor in rewards, which are an important step to maintaining mental fitness.
A reward can be something like your favourite food, your favourite drink, your favourite day out, your favourite film - whatever you want! It’s your reward. Don’t worry about destroying your progress, because you can factor high calorie foods into a weight loss plan if you’re sensible.
Tip #4 - Do things you like to do
Unless your goal only has one path to completion (i.e. if your goal is to get stronger, you’ve GOT to lift progressively heavier loads), there’s nothing stopping you from picking a type of exercise you enjoy more. If you just want to be generally fitter, pick something you love to do an it’ll make the process much easier! If you want to improve your stamina and love football, 5 a side is a great way to get some hidden HIIT in!
This works really well with weight loss and general fitness improvement - pick something you love and do it often. It’ll help you get there more quickly if you love doing it.
Tip #5 - Start small
Ignore what other people are doing. Stop looking at fitness influencers and comparing your workouts to theirs. Stop looking around the gym and thinking your efforts aren’t as good or as worthy as other people. It’s YOUR journey, so just do your best. If your best at the moment is a simple 20 minute session, good for you - start there. Build up from somewhere, but just get started. If the idea of a huge workout scares you enough to not want to exercise, ask a personal trainer to design you a quick and simple workout to get you going.
Never compare your starting point with someone else’s 5 years of consistent training. We all start somewhere, and with enough effort and persistence we all make progress. One day you’ll look back and be glad you got going!
Tip #6 - Train with a friend!
If you struggle to exercise, ask your most active friend can you tag along with them - that way you mix both socialising and exercising, killing two birds with one stone! The important thing here is that you pick the friend who is most likely to exercise. If you pick a friend who is likely to skip the gym, you’ll find yourself diving out of training too, and that’s exactly what you’re trying NOT to do by getting a friend involved!
If you don’t have a fit friend who is a regular exerciser, see the next tip - it’ll get rid of that problem for you!
Tip #7 - Outsource your motivation
If you struggle to motivate yourself for any other reason, why not outsource your motivation to a personal trainer or group exercise class? At AdMac Fitness we have both! If you’ve booked a personal training session or a group exercise class, it’s a commitment in your diary that you can’t back out from, so it’ll force you to go. When you get there, you’ll get started and before you know it you’ll be enjoying your workout and be glad you went!
You’ll leave your session feeling great, even though you couldn’t be bothered beforehand. It’s amazing what some exercise at the hands of a great personal trainer can do!
At AdMac Fitness we’re not about fads, fashions and short term fixes. We want you to succeed properly over the long term, so with our help and advice you can get your fitness back on track! If you’d like us to help you, contact us on 07921465108 or email us at admacfitness@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you!