This is one of those more generalised posts but I think a lot of the people who read this blog maybe could take something away from this and if not you probably know someone who could benefit from it. There are two kinds of motivation commonly thought of for exercise.
- Extrinsic - Loose weight, get bigger, look good for this date. These are goal based short to medium term rewards and they may even have some form of punishment attached (i.e. don't make weight loss target for wedding don't look as good as you want and as a result you feel bad).
- Intrinsic - I do it because I love it, I run because it makes me feel good, I love the process of getting stronger. These motivations are based off a love of what you do, you are more interested in the process and the mastery of a task then it's reward.
Out of these two motivations the second one is by far the most successful it will see you doing what you are doing well into the future and you will almost certainly end up more successful at what your doing as a result.
The trick is to find an exercise or an activity that you want to do for you. The few people who find running on a treadmill or doing cookie cutter machine resistance training programmes engaging and in need of mastery are few and far between and I think it would be a good jumping off point to assume you are not one of them.
"These new treadmills have the internet! OMG! Now I can facebook while I do a meaningless task that I hate!"
I had this conversation twice yesterday and it was a good moment to hone in on a couple of things that the main stream fitness market is fucking up while crossfit is absolutely nailing it.
- Cross fit challenges it's members! It sets ridiculous workouts that people find extremely difficult and people love it. As a reult they stick to it and get much better results as it's hard to master or be good at. Main stream fitness like to make things "easy" it puts every thing at your finger tips and spoon feeds retention is very low.
- Cross fit provides a variety of challenging tasks it includes the use of snatch and clean and jerk two of the hardest movements to master in sport. Main stream fitness makes things as easy as possible as not to intimidate. Cross fit gets results, mainstream fitness gets people in the door.
- Crossfit engages people in a group atmosphere and community spirit. Mainstram fitness deals in quantity and deals in a meat market atmosphere.
- Cross fit can charge a premium because people use it and see value from it, mainstream media charges as little as it can to make a profit or as much as it can in some markets because people don't use it and let it come out of their account.
When you juxtapose the two business models it's not hard to see why cross fit has proven to be so popular and has stuck around as well as it has. In the fitness industry these two models of participation kind of show you the difference between an intrinsic motivation model and an extrinsic motivation model.
Crossfit trys to engage and challenge you it looks to set difficult tasks that you can get your teeth into and master.
Typical gyms try to make the "horrible" mundane task of exercise as easy as pain free as possible.
How many calories did you burn on your treadmill session? Not enough to off set the fact that your not going to be doing this in 3 weeks that's for sure.
How do you achieve intrinsic motivation in exercise?
Simple find something you love doing, try a bunch of different sports and exercise routines put something together that speaks to you.
Go for a run because you want to do it so you can be healthier for your kids or because you want to be the best damn runner you can be. Don't go for a run to burn calories or to loose weight because if you go about it with this mind set on a long enough time frame the only really guaranteed outcome is failure.
Marc
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