Keep your Motivation High

     A current Mintel marketing report found that just 20% of health club members only use their membership once a month. When your fitness ambitions waver, use these tips to turn your fitness resolutions from hassle to habit.

THE NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMER
Get a mental picture of the thing, not relating to exercise, that you're the most motivated about. This could entail being the best dad, coining your first million or scoring the brunette in payroll. Envision this image the size of a bed-side picture frame. Pay attention to its' colours and the feelings it creates - then give yourself a mark out of 10 for how motivated you are to achieving it. Now think of your exercise goals, give them a mark out of 10 and put them in the same picture frame with identical colours and brightness. Think of this picture when you feel like skipping a training session and your brain will become hard-wired to make your body sweat more - just like your visits to the payroll department.

THE BODY-BUILDER
For motivation, focus on what other people say and think of you. Self-applied peer pressure is the free pass to long-term success. "I often imagine how the small improvements to my physique will look to other people, such as my girlfriend, mates, colleagues or other competitors," smiles Peter Chown, a former Mr Universe bodybuilding champion. "This is a far better source of motivation to keep exercising than if you imagined how the improvements would look to myself." Strive to please others and you'll gratify yourself.

THE HYPNOTHERAPIST
Forget about motivation and rather seek inspiration. To do this you need to stop focussing on what you don't want and start focussing on what you do want. This encourages your unconscious to achieve your exercise and weight loss goals. To do this, don't tell yourself: 'I want to stop eating junk food and lose weight,' because this dwells on what you don't want. Rather tell yourself: I want to eat well, feel fit and powerful - this spotlights what you do want and will help you achieve it." Be a con artist to your own mind and these cheap tricks to bigger biceps will be yours.

THE SPORTS PSYCHOLOGIST
Set your mind to aim for minimal pain and maximum gain. Consistency is vital to achieving your goals but it doesn't have to be reliably torturous. Choosing exercises where discomfort is at a minimum makes you more likely to stick to them. Yes, exhausting interval sprints might burn the most fat, quickly but if you detest doing them then you simply won't stick to the regime in the long them. Only do exercise that you look forward to - it might not be the fastest route to your goals, but your long term gains will be better. You heard correctly: croquette trumps marathon running at keeping your keenness high.

THE WHITE COATS
Make a list of the things you can do to be fitter. Write down the steps you can do to improve your performance, not why you should be exercising. Research in the Journal of Applied Biobehavioral Research divided infrequent exercisers into two groups. The first group listed the reasons why they should increase their exercise performance - these reasons included: losing weight or being healthier. The second group listed the actions they could take to increase their performance; their answers included things like training with a friend or doing a cross-training session. The second group exercised more often and improved their fitness and performance while the first group remained the unfit part-timers that they always were.

THE COVERMODEL
Get a mental picture of how your body will look in 5 years. If you're exercising infrequently then this image is likely to be unappealing. "With this self-portrait in mind, imagine failing your exercise programme and never going back to the gym," says Olly Foster a multiple Men's Health Cover model. "This will trigger a surge of motivation to exercise because you'll be fearful of not looking good." A study at Bath University backed this up when they discovered that this fear of failure is particularly strong when people feel they can already see signs of the feared (fatter) self they were striving to avoid.

THE PERSONAL TRAINER
Make yourself hungry for more. When most guys start an exercise programme they try to do it all perfectly from day one. It's better to start small with an easy program, tease yourself. Even when you want to do more - don't. Hold yourself back. Build up such a fierce appetite that you crave more effort and can't wait to get going again. Restraining yourself creates this desire so don't bolt out the blocks too quickly and execute everything perfectly for a few weeks then suffer a burn out and quit.

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