How to find training motivation when you are tired?
Have you ever felt tired and drained out at the end of a long workday or at the end of the week? Tempted to skip the workouts you have planned for yourself? Tiredness is one of the most common reasons to skip exercise but there are ways to make it work, even when there is no energy left.
Strangely enough, people tend to skip pleasant activities when feeling bad. It is often tempting to skip workout because of fatigue and boredom and read a nice book or have a glass of wine or beer instead. Actually, it is very human to be irrational. And yet, it is even more human to do something about it! There are several easy ways to overcome those little motivation crisis. Hereby I would like to share a few of them with you:
- Think outside the box! On those days when you feel tired and your typical training routine doesn’t motivate you enough to leave the couch, think of the activities that you have enjoyed in the past. Maybe you used to play badminton when you were a kid or perhaps enjoyed swimming? Just try something different to spice up your typical workout routine.
- Invite or join a friend! It’s always harder to hoax a friend than yourself – having a common workout time is always a good laziness killer.
- Choose an easier exercise! While being very tired, even a thought about a hard workout makes you want reject it. So, instead of skipping your workout, go for an easier one.
- Try morning workouts! If you are a morning person, try to go for a morning run or swimming before work. It makes you feel fresh and finding a training motivation is also easier. However, if you are not a morning person, even 5-10 minutes of exercising in the morning increases your metabolism and wakes you up.
- Use weekends! If you are too tired to work out on workdays, try to pitch just training or two into your working days and leave the rest for the weekend. In that case try to balance this with workouts on both weekend days.
- Take the training bag with you! In case you prefer to work out during workdays but still struggle with training motivation from time to time, the easiest way is to take your training bag with you to work and go to training directly from work without meeting your couch in between. It is a simple advice but it really works.
So, just take a moment and think about how you can make starting a workout more appealing. You may feel tired at this very moment but this feeling alone does not preclude your workout, the feeling does not step in your way and hold you back. You can very well take your tiredness together with you to the gym and leave it there ;)
