Success with Bodybuilding & Fitness: How to Stay Motivated

How to Stay Hungry and Motivated

In order to meet the challenge of ongoing intense training and dieting, you have to maintain a continual state of supercharged motivation. Simply stated, to stay motivated, you have to know where you're going, believe you can get there and have an incentive that stimulates you to work toward the objective. For bodybuilders the image of future accomplishment is where you're going, the awareness that if others have done it, you can too is what helps you believe you will get there, and the incentive is the size, shape and strength increases you'll enjoy when you reach your destination.

One of the best ways to develop this inner drive is through systematically setting and then working toward viable, attainable goals. Your goals must be specific, realistic and clear. As you work toward and achieve each goal, you build confidence, which stokes the fires and paves the way for applied effort and ultimate success with your next goal.

Reaching your major objective, or long-term goal, is best accomplished by approaching it through a series of small steps, or short-term goals. Setting lofty unrealistic goals right from the start will invariably discourage you and reduce your drive to succeed. Another effective way to boost motivation is to use a training log, in which you keep accurate records of your exercises, reps and poundages for each workout. This allows you to see your progress on a daily basis, thus providing a built-in motivating system. And since the motivation to train is always stimulated by desire to improve, seeing your performance and strength improve over time fuels this desire.

Psychologists have known for years that behavior which is rewarded strengthens feelings of esteem and tends to reoccur. We also know that the continual progress noted in a carefully kept training record provides such a reward, along with the positive mental stimulus to keep the rewards coming.