Get Your Motivation Back

Sometimes I lose my motivation. We all do! And that doesn't mean you should just quit entirely. This can be applied to many aspects in life, but this is a fitness blog, so I am obviously going to compare this to being in the gym!

If you do the same thing week after week after week how do you NOT get bored?! You'll start seeing a stalling of progress as well, which is NOT the goal. Typically, I cannot go longer than 3-4 weeks before a certain workout or training method bores me to tears and I need to shake things up.

I have compiled a few things that you can do to change things in your training regimen. Give it a try if you need to spice things up and get that motivation back. :)

1. Try supersets, trisets, and/or giant sets

A superset is where you perform an exercise and immediately upon completion of that exercise, you follow it up with another exercise. A triset involves three back-to-back exercises, and a giant sit includes 4+. This is a good way to make your workouts quick and efficient while also getting your heart rate up, so that you get the cardiovascular benefits as well. Sometimes taking 1-3 minute rest periods after doing an exercise can get monotonous so try these out!

2. Split up your muscle groups in different ways.

For example, do you often devote one day entirely for arms? Instead, try pairing back with biceps and chest with triceps. This will shake things up a bit and keep it more surprising. You can also perhaps do shoulders with triceps, and chest with back.

3. Try a few tricks in your training to exhaust your muscles.

For example, try doing 24s! Laura has an excellent post describing this training method here. You could also try going hardcore and doing the 100 reps method, where you perform a few sets and on the last set, you perform 100 reps. Also, try doing dropsets and pyramids! Dropsets are where you perform an exercise for a certain number of reps and then immediately drop the weight and push for more reps. Pyramids are where you can either add weight after each set, or drop it.

4. Mix up your rep ranges and number of sets.

If you always do 12-15 reps, try going heavier and doing 8-10 reps. Or, go even heavier and try the 1-5 rep range. This is a big one for me personally because I have finally started experimenting with my one rep max on certain exercises. It gives your bored muscles a new stimulus to grow. On the other hand, if you always go really heavy, try doing more reps to shock your muscles. Also, think about changing how many sets you do. If you always do 3 sets of an exercise, try adding more volume and doing 8.

5. Give yourself a complete rest, like a deload week.

Oh no. I said it... the dreaded deload week. Yes, sometimes we lose our motivation simply because our muscles are just screaming for a BREAK. Sometimes you just need to take a week or so off just to recover and allow your muscles to calm down. I know that for all of us gymrats, this seems traumatic because we love our beloved iron, but the iron isn't going anywhere and neither is your progress so take a week off, relax, breathe, and by the time you hit the gym again, you'll smash those weights right into the ground. I plan on taking a deload week very soon myself!

6. Try adding a different style of training to your routine.
If you do a typical bodybuilding split, you can easily add one or two days of different training types to keep yourself from getting bored. Try things like CrossFit, yoga, pilates, exercise classes, biking, etc. You never know how much you will like it!

7. Use different equipment.
Always use dumbbells for your shoulder presses? Try the barbells for the military press. Always use machines for exercises such as bicep curls and bench press? Try using free weights, like dumbbells, barbells, and the Olympic bar. Try using the cables, which keep constant tension on the muscle. Or try mixing in machines just to mix things up a bit!

There you have it. No one wants to lose their motivation. Just switch things up. It seems so simple but apparently it isn't when acted upon. Have a great day everyone!

Questions: Have you ever lost your mojo? How did you recover it? Do you have any other tips that I could add?

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