We asked women how their exercise motivation evolved over the years – and the change is brilliant
We asked women to share what inspired them to start training and what motivates them now and the difference was so telling.
We know that exercise motivation is a complicated, fleeting and deeply personal thing. What motivates you to get out of bed in the morning is likely very different to what motivates your friends: you might crave yoga practices that make you feel deeply connected to your body by stretching far into postures but be repulsed at the thought of high intensity, quick-moving circuits.
Your friends, on the other hand, might find that movement is most exciting to them when they can feel the burn in their muscles that lets them know the weight they’re lifting is making them stronger.
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Essentially, what motivates us is different for each of us. But have you ever considered how our individual motivations change too? How the reasons that you move now are likely different to what made you start running, going to the gym, practising yoga, cycling to work, or whatever it was that made you love to exercise?
What motivates women to move?
We took the question to the Strong Women readers and asked regular exercisers if their motivations were different to what they were when they started – 81% said yes. So what made them start in the beginning? Just some of the answers were:
“I felt like I had to”
“Lose weight, to ‘tone up’”
“When I was younger it was about losing weight”
“Lose weight and change my body”
“Aesthetics”
“Weight loss and body image”
“Lose body fat and improve stamina”
“For knee pain and strength”
“Feeling free”
“To become stronger”
“To burn calories”
“To get fit and stay fit”
“To counteract the excessive alcohol consumption of lockdown 1”
“Managing my weight”
“I wanted to move my body in a way that felt good”
We also asked the same women what motivates them to keep up their training now. The responses included:
“I now enjoy it”
“To complete in functional fitness comps and get as strong as possible”
“For joy, energy, good mental health, holistic well-being”
“Mental and physical health and I love my running community”
“I enjoy the classes, gym community and the ‘me time’”
“To see how strong I can become”
“Mental health – it’s a far more effective motivator”
“For the love of lifting heavy sh*t”
“To gain strength and feel strong and proud”
“The benefits of my mental health and body acceptance have been incredible”
“For my energy levels and because it’s good for my mind”
“To maintain or improve – use it or lose it folks”
“It feels amazing – I’m so much happier when I move”
“Mental health”
“I love feeling fit and healthy – my focus is on performance not weight loss”
“I’ve learned to enjoy it and the benefits of feeling healthy keep me going back”
Unfortunately, it seems the (not so shocking) reality is that many people start exercising from what Dr Emily Martin, sports psychology course leader at St Mary’s University, dubs ‘low quality’ motivation. “It’s called this because the motivation is rooted in trying to please others or feelings of guilt.
“There are multiple reasons why people might find that their motivations change, but often it comes down to the fact that they begin to see some more rewards. Maybe they find that they run a little bit easier, or they find that they can lift a little bit more in the gym, or they notice an uplift in their mood. When they start to see these little wins, then actually that changes the quality of your motivation slightly.”
Research, including a 1998 paper from the Journal of Health Psychology, supports the theory that early motivators for exercise are usually rooted in extrinsic (and specifically body-focused) goals. But those who stick with their routine did so because they shifted their motivation to intrinsic (especially enjoyment-related) motives, such as the social element of exercise.
It’s the experience Emma Obayuvana, a trainer from the Strong Women Training Club, had: “The only reason why I’m in this industry is because I wanted to see what my body would look like if I started taking the gym seriously,” she says. “My motivation was purely aesthetic. But then it became about wanting to be stronger, then about wanting to be amazing at yoga, and then it’s about mentally being able to cope with what’s going on in the rest of my life.
“My short-term goals still change, from wanting to work on endurance running or feeling stable in a certain yoga pose, but for the most part my motivation is always about how I feel.”
Does your motivation matter?
The question is, does it matter if your motivations change? While you might think you need to be hyper-focused on one goal to be consistent, Dr Martin actually encourages us to shift our motivations from low quality to high quality motivators.
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“Extrinsic motivations tend to yo-yo, so people feel motivated to work towards these goals at the start and at particular times of year (like after Christmas or around summer),” she explains.
On the other hand, when you make exercise more aligned with your values – be it resilience, community or health – “you get increased consistency and engagement with exercise, and the outcome is greater wellbeing, satisfaction and greater enjoyment.”
There’s the argument that it doesn’t matter what gets you through the door. Plenty of women managed to find the love of movement, despite it starting from a more negative mindset, while reaping the physical benefits of exercising more. But the reality is that exercising from a place of self-hatred is “lowered enjoyment, negative self-esteem and social physique anxiety because we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others,” Dr Martin explains.
In a 2001 study, researchers at the University of Leicester found that people who had extrinsic motivations for exercise also had significantly worse psychological wellbeing. And in the study from the Journal of Health Psychology, researchers noted that “it is little use focusing on health as the outcome when the behaviour is being conducted for non-health reasons… as many health-related behaviours are.”
So while your motivations may eventually shift, it’s better for your mental health and the likelihood of consistency to just start with the knowledge that exercise is there to make you feel better.
“It’s difficult to be absolutely completely intrinsically motivated,” says Dr Martin. “As humans, we seek reward in some way. So I think that most people do well with multiple motivations, and if we can move away from the language that we have as a society about needing to compare ourselves and instead think about what it is that you want to achieve as an individual, we can move from a much better place.”
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Hopefully, we’re doing that. Given the fact that the people who responded to our questions are people who are experienced exercisers, we can assume that their motivations came from a time when the holistic benefits of movement weren’t as widely discussed.
Now, since lockdown and thanks to the growing prevalence of anti-diet culture conversations, we are seeing more people motivated by intrinsic motivations from the get-go.
One thing seems to be true – if you avoid the hyperfocus on bodily changes and let yourself become curious about how movement really makes you feel and explore different fitness communities, you’ll probably find that your motivations naturally change. You might start getting up in the morning for reasons other than just what you look like – because you want to meet a friend, feel energised for a day at your desk, or your club signed you up for a competition.
Ideally, you’d start from that place of joy. But keep an open mind and allow your motivations to change and you may find yourself moving for better reasons.
Images: Getty
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