motivation.

Doing a spur of the moment post today.
I wanted to write about what motivation means to me.

In the past and a lot of times even now, I struggle with motivation.
I lose my confidence, focus, or a sense of direction.
Not even with my health & fitness, but also in life. Waking up can be a struggle in itself.
So how do I do it?

I make a mental list of my personal strengths.
Yesterday, for example, I was extremely upset.
I had a strain in my hamstring and I broke down. Injuries cause me major upset because I feel like it’s the end of the world if I can’t workout. (addicted, much?). In reality, it’s just my body saying “WHOA, slow down. you need to rest sometimes.” But in my head I say “you’re not even close to your goals and this is just going to set you back even more.”
Then I had to stop and think about that thought. That was a terrible cognitive representation of what’s really going on.
I looked at what I have accomplished in the last year.
Since I skipped my run yesterday due to pain, I chose to do a yoga DVD that I used to do all the time a couple years ago. I thought it would help get a good stretch in and maybe still work on some strength.
This particular DVD used to be HARD for me to do. I remember how I would struggle with the chatarungas because I didn’t have the upper body strength, how I couldn’t lift my leg up and hold it because it burned so bad. and this time it was a walk in the park. my strength in my body has increased by a HUGE amount. it’s unbelieveable to me. this changed that negative thought right away and made me realize all of my personal strengths i’ve achieved. which motivates me to rest, heal, and keep on striving to where i want to be. it doesn’t matter how long it takes. there will be set backs. that’s normal. there’s no such thing as perfection.

An eye opener this morning was the participants that I teach in bootcamp.
They are extremely motivated. Most of them have stuck around since January. Waking up everyday of the week to get an hour work out in at 5:30 a.m.! Watching them get stronger, run longer, increase their range of motion, build their endurance, look and feel GOOD has been such a blessing to me. They are my number one motivators for myself.

Today we did 2 AMRAP challenges. (as many rounds as possible for time). I’ll share with you what we did as a sneak peek to the kind of things we do in bootcamp.

Warm up: run 400m
do some dynamic stretching (lunges, walking quad stretch, good mornings, knees to chest, etc)

#1: AMRAP 15 minutes:

– 10 sumo deadlift high pull
– 10 kettlebell swings
– 10 pull ups
– 10 push ups
run 250m

rest 2-3 minutes

#2: AMRAP 15 minutes:

– 30 walking lunges with 10# plate overhead
– 30 jump rope high knees
– 15 box jumps
– 15 floppy burpees

Everyone got 4-5 rounds for the first tone and about 3.5 rounds for the second! Amazing, I tell you. The transformations I’ve seen in such little time..is incredible. I love my job.