Exercise is one of the most important prerequisites for a healthy life, but people still succumb to their inner demons time and again. How can this lack of willpower be overcome? An expert helps with his motivation tips for sport.
How do I motivate myself to exercise?
An entire field of science is concerned with the question of how I can change my behavior and encourage positive behavior. There are now various controls that can be used to increase motivation for sport. Firstly, on an individual level:
- The right attitude
It is important to know that sport is good for you. This includes positive emotions towards exercise; it should not be perceived as a compulsion. - A motive
There are different motives that encourage people to start doing sport. “Something for your health” is a classic example. However, it is primarily a “beginner’s motive”; it is not enough to “stick with it”!
But we also know from studies that people need clear behavioral plans, so willpower alone is not enough, it must be as concrete as possible. This works via:
- Concrete planning
To make it as concrete as possible, people have to look at their calendar and plan sport just like other appointments – and then take care of it and protect it in the same way. This scheduling helps to actually complete the sport lesson. Because small stumbling blocks, such as bad weather or a delayed train, can always be a good excuse to cancel the appointment after all. - Social support
Friends or sports groups help me to keep these appointments. Because my inner laziness has less of a chance if a friend is waiting at the door to pick me up for jogging . - Realistic goal setting
We should have a sense of achievement and be aware of it. This is particularly important for people who have never done any sport before and always thought they were unathletic. It is therefore crucial to set realistic goals. On the other hand, if you say: “I’m going to start running so that I can run a marathon in two months,” you will most likely fail. The aim is to make the “exercise packages” big enough that they can actually be managed. This strengthens what is known as “self-efficacy” – an important key to long-term physical activity. - The right sport
The movements should also suit my needs. For example, if I have been a ball player all my life, then functional gymnastics is quite difficult for me. And if I don’t really enjoy being in company, a team club is the wrong choice. - Search for offers in the area
The form of exercise that someone chooses should be as close to their own home as possible or easily accessible. The more effort it takes to get there, the less likely it is that I will show up there regularly several times a week. This has been confirmed again during the corona pandemic. People who have easier access to sports areas were able to maintain or even increase their exercise behavior more easily.
Everyone knows that exercising is healthy. Why does our inner demons still resist?
We all know that exercise is healthy and that we should do more of it. In addition, exercise is a basic human evolutionary need. In the past, hunters would not have been able to feed their families sitting down. The problem is that this need for exercise competes with many other needs that are also important to humans. The question should therefore be: How can we give priority to the need for exercise? Over relaxing on the couch, for example.
The benefits of “green exercises” can provide additional motivation
“ Green exercises”, i.e. forms of exercise that take place in nature, have a significant benefit in terms of mental health. They therefore address the aspect that has suffered particularly during the crisis. And that is not the only advantage of sport in nature:
- Sunlight, but also cold, wind and rain have a positive effect on the immune system.
- External influences such as the sounds of nature increase well-being and make it easier to switch off from stressful everyday life.
- Those who vary their running routes and regularly move and find their way in unfamiliar and complex environments even stimulate the formation of new brain cells.
- A varied environment and irregular surfaces require constant sensory adjustment. All senses are alert and active, the interaction of the senses and coordination are improved.
“Sport is becoming more diverse, more colorful, more individual and everyone can find something that gives them joy.”
In addition to having sports appointments in your calendar, it’s also about integrating exercise into your everyday life . There are numerous options: you can take the stairs instead of the escalator, or cycle to work instead of driving. I’m not sure whether all these e-scooters in cities aren’t counterproductive to promoting exercise, because people are walking less and less on short distances. Working from home could also mean that we move less and less in our everyday lives, as we no longer have to commute to work. But we’re still investigating the effects.
We need even more reliable and high-quality offers for children and young people in educational institutions. Only in schools and daycare centers can we reach all children and young people, regardless of their social background. Therefore, as a consequence of the Corona crisis, we need not only a digital pact for educational institutions, but also a movement pact for holistic support.
Does digitalization help with sports motivation?
I don’t want to judge that. It’s a trend that also triggers counter-trends. The urge for more traditional, natural forms of exercise is therefore more pronounced again. One advantage of digital offerings is that the range is even more colorful, diverse and individual, and everyone can find something that suits their motives. “I can’t find anything that does what I actually want” is now a minor argument against sport. Today, practically everyone has the opportunity to find the right offer.
Can couples motivate each other in the home office? What options are there?
If you want to infect your family or partner with your enthusiasm for sport, you should know what motivates them and approach them accordingly. How intensively do they want to do sport, do they need peace and quiet, do they want to have a conversation at the same time? These are all points that you can start with. In addition, some people do need to compare their performance in a group or with their partner. However, this can lead to dissatisfaction, especially for people who have never really done sport before. They are better off comparing themselves individually. And they should be supported in this.
“The more carefully you consider your entry into sport, the higher the likelihood of sticking with it in the long term.”
What helps you to stay with it in the long term?
We know that the more carefully considered the start, the higher the likelihood that someone will stick with it. For example, we did a study with fitness studios. Those members who checked that they had decided to sign the contract spontaneously gave up more often than those who had thought it through carefully beforehand.
If you want to increase the probability of success, you should ask and answer important W-questions beforehand, such as:
- When do I want to do sports?
- Where do I want to do sports?
- Who do I want to do sports with?
- How do I want to do sports?
In addition, a “motivation to get started” must be replaced or supplemented by a good “motivation to keep going” in order to stay on track in the long term. Motives can change over time, at the latest when I have achieved my goal, for example losing weight. This includes, among other things, the joy of sport or the environment in which I find myself, which also represents a certain social obligation, and a sense of achievement.
How do you deal with an injury setback?
An injury does not necessarily force athletes to take a break. They may have to rest the injured muscle , for example , but they can train other parts of the body in the meantime so as not to lose their rhythm. It is important that the injury is rested so that the body can recover accordingly.
However, if the injury or illness is so severe that no sport is possible, performance also suffers. We know from studies carried out in the 1980s that people who lie down for three weeks lose about half of their muscle strength. Endurance also decreases by about 20 to 30 percent. This means that after such a break, you should start slowly again. The wrong approach is to then look back at the successes of the past and try to achieve them all at once.
What is the right tactic for returning to play after an injury break?
In this situation, it is more productive to focus on making quick progress. For example, if you want to improve your speed over 100 meters from 15 to 14 seconds, you will make much faster progress than someone who wants to improve it from 11 to 10 seconds. And another advantage for a comeback: if you were already moving before an injury, the “muscle memory” will help you get back there more quickly.
The increase in muscle performance depends on the one hand on the mass and blood flow, but also on intramuscular coordination, i.e. the interaction between muscles and the central nervous system. And these coordination processes, such as running fast, are already stored. This makes it a little easier to return to an earlier performance level than to reach an area you have never been in before. Nevertheless, you have to train just as intensively as before the injury because the level differences, i.e. the 30 percent that I am missing, remain the same.
Can a sport start to be fun if you practice it long enough?
Sport is then used as a tool to achieve a goal – but that always happens to some extent. The fun is not in the training, but in the function of the training. For example, to have a beautiful body, people are prepared to invest behavioral costs, such as in the right exercise and the right diet . The joy then comes from the product. But that probably won’t make you happy in the long term. Despite sport, the body is subject to an aging process that makes it increasingly difficult to achieve the goals set. And whether this optimization process and this obsession with beauty are also psychologically healthy… I would put a question mark behind that.
“Sport can trigger positive and negative emotions. The way it is done is crucial to ensure that it can develop its health benefits.”
Can sport also have negative effects?
Sport can work in both directions: positive and negative. For example, there are studies that show that moderate endurance training in nature can be just as effective against depression as drug treatment. On the other hand, sport can also trigger negative emotions: you lose a game or get injured. Sport can have health benefits, especially in the long term, depending on how it is done.
How can you generally remedy a lack of exercise?
Basically, we need a social solution. Unfortunately, the more a society develops, the more the lack of exercise increases, and at the same time, diseases such as type 2 diabetes . Yet we have so much clear evidence of the positive effect of exercise on health problems. This ranges from mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety to some forms of cancer.
Despite these findings, the lack of exercise continues to increase. We simply cannot manage, even from a political perspective, to give exercise a higher priority. It starts with children and ends in old people’s homes. But if we could, for example, increase the number of walkers from 5 to 10 percent, I believe that would be the largest intervention campaign ever.