Sometimes people ask me how I get motivated to exercise and yesterday was a good example of how I can push myself. It was a gray skies day with a chance of rain (although it never did rain). Yesterday clearly showed that the fitness motivation definition must include going against the crowd at times.
When it is a nice, sunny warm day, it’s almost certain that there will be people lounging around at our outdoor swimming pool. However, when the days are gray, most people don’t come out. When I got there yesterday afternoon, there were a few kids who were leaving as the skies got grayer.
This suited me just fine since I got the entire pool to myself which means I got to do my swim workout without any pesty kids running into me. It’s definitely a different type of swim workout when one is doing lengths in the pool with nobody else around. It can be almost meditative except I don’t want to get too much into a meditative state since I’ll lose count of my pool lengths!
Of course, I feel great mentally when I finish my swim workout since I know once again, I did something totally awesome for my health and fitness. But I also know that yesterday is a day when I had to go against the crowd since most people will not be venturing to an outdoor swimming pool when skies are gray. Even for most people who do go to the pool, they don’t do much actual swimming as they usually just sit in the pool to cool off or lounge on the decks.
Most People Are Just Not Fitness Oriented
Let’s face it, most people in today’s society are just not fitness oriented. Despite the availability of gyms and many possible activities or sports, those of us who are active represent a minority in the population.
Most of my friends and relatives fall into the majority segment in this case which is unfortunate as I see them gain weight each year. I did an episode of Motivational WebTV some time ago to report on the national fitness statistics of both adults and children – the figures were quite shocking – check the video out as it’s worth viewing.
If I needed friends to encourage me or accompany me during my workouts, yesterday and many other days would have been a problem. So to me, part of maintaining fitness is to develop the self discipline to get myself out there and do whatever workout I have scheduled for the day, even when nobody else wants to.
Having friends and workout buddies are great for those who need them but they might not always be around. So one must get the motivation to do many workouts solo when nobody else is around. Even if you have fitness oriented friends, you can’t always count on them to be around whenever you should be working out.
This is a key element in long term fitness in my mind. You do have to go against the crowd as most of us fitness oriented folks are in the minority.
But in some instances, working out alone is actually fine by me. I’m able to focus on whatever I am doing. It does take great effort over time to be able to get disciplined enough to workout especially alone.
One just has to adjust the fitness motivation definition to include lots of self discipline. However, the long term results of going against the crowd are always worth it!
