How Can We Increase and Maintain Motivation Levels When Engaging in Physical Activity?

The following blog was written for Kakana, an On-Demand Inclusive Exercise Platform. For your health and safety, please ensure you consult a doctor, physiotherapist or health care provider before engaging in new forms of physical activity.
https://onekakana.com/blog/index.php/2020/09/24/increase-motivation

Participating in physical activity for individuals with disabilities produces numerous psychological benefits, including increased self-confidence, body image, level of independence, quality of life, as well as reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms. Despite these psychological benefits of engaging in physical activity, motivation levels can have a huge impact on an individual’s ability to consistently exercise or participate in sport. However, there are several strategies to help an individual increase and maintain motivation levels to consistently engage in physical activity. Below are 4 key strategies to help you increase and maintain your motivation levels regarding physical activity.

1. Goal setting: setting and monitoring goals
Setting and monitoring goals are a great way to challenge yourself and monitor your progress. This can be a collaborative activity with your caregiver or your physical activity buddy. It is helpful to write your goals down in a journal or notebook to keep track of them. When setting goals, ensure you follow the “SMART” acronym:

Specific (is this goal as specific as possible?)
Measurable (how will I know when I achieved this goal?)
Achievable (is this goal achieve but also excites me?)
Realistic (is this goal realistic for what else is going on in my life right now?)
Time bound (by when do I want to achieve this goal?)

Setting SMART process goals are key to maintaining motivation levels. Process goals are smaller goals that we focus on to improve our skills and behaviours.  Setting process goals can help us break down our big goals into smaller processes in which can be more effective in helping us achieve our outcome goals. Start by choosing 1 process goal that you can work on over the next couple of weeks.

Example:
Process goal: I am going to handcycle 3 days a week (Tuesday, Thursday, Friday) for 30 minutes and increase the distance I’ve cycled on a weekly basis by 2 minutes each week.

Outcome goal: Improve cardiovascular fitness levels after 1 month

May sure keep track of your goals by writing them down in a journal or notebook and assessing your progress on a weekly basis!

2. Self-talk
Self-talk is a psychological strategy consisting of how an individual talks to themselves using cue words or phrases. Self-talk is directly linked to an individual’s intrinsic motivation in which the individual takes responsibility for their actions and engages in an activities based on enjoyment. How an individual talks to themselves before and during physical activity can have a huge influence on their intention to engage in physical activity and likelihood of them continuing to engage in physical activity in the future. There are two different forms of self-talk; helpful self-talk and unhelpful self-talk. Helpful self-talk refers to cue words and phrases an individual says to themselves to improve their physical activity performance, whereas unhelpful self-talk refers to cue words and phrases that decrease an individual’s physical activity performance. When using self-talk, it can be helpful to ask yourself 2 questions “is talking to myself in that way helpful or unhelpful?” “What would I tell my friend to say to themselves in this situation?” E.g. I would tell my friend to say to themselves “I can do this! I’ve done it before!”

3. Social support: engaging in online group physical activity
Engaging in group exercise classes online can be a fun and engaging way for individuals to virtually develop social connections. By being a part of this online community, the individual receives on-going support from their instructors and other participants in the class. This on-going support can enhance an individual’s self-belief and their ability to overcome challenging moments whilst engaging in physical activity.

4. Achievement Journal
Each week, reflect on 3 physical activity accomplishments in your journal:

For example:
1. I was able to handcycle for 8 straight minutes this week
2. I was able to get in and out of my wheelchair without assistance every day this week
3. I participated in 2 online group classes

Reflecting on your physical activity achievements each week can help increase your self-confidence and self-esteem in your abilities, as well as maintaining your motivation levels to continue participating in various forms of physical activity. 

A step by step guide to settings goals

When training for an important competition, there is a huge amount of emphasis on physical preparation - but what about preparing mentally? A method that can help athletes mentally prepare for competition and enhance their focus, self-confidence and overall performance is Psychological Skills Training (PST).

PST involves techniques that an athlete consistently practices in order to enhance and maintain their performance. Primarily, PST is composed of four main components; goal setting, relaxation techniques, imagery and self-talk. Today I will be focusing on goal setting, explaining my role as a performance psychologist in helping individual athletes and teams set and achieve their goals.

Goal setting is at the core of psychological skills training to improve an individual’s motivation, productivity and attentional focus on a specific task. As a performance psychologist, I help educate athletes on how to develop, monitor and evaluate goals.

Firstly, I introduce athletes to the “SMART” acronym when settings goals, explaining that all goals need to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. This is a major component of setting both short term and long-term goals for an individual to remain accountable for the goals they have set, as well as evaluating their goals to assess their progress.

The goal setting process is broken down into three different components comprised of process, performance, and outcome goals:

• Process goals are the smaller steps an athlete takes to achieve their performance goals. They focus on the repeated execution of a specific skill or strategy during training that they the individual wishes to improve. By repeatedly practicing the skill, the individual is able to gain attentional control and improve their performance. For example, a process goal for a swimmer could be to practice not breathing out of the turn during the main set for the next four training sessions. After the sessions are complete, the individual would then evaluate this goal to establish whether they should adjust the goal to a more challenging process goal,  such as practicing not breathing out of turn during prep set and main set for the next four training sessions.

• Performance goals are the performance standards that athletes set themselves in order to reach their outcome goals. When setting performance goals remember that they should be aspects of your performance that you have control over. For example, a swimmer could set a performance goal of swimming 100M breaststroke in 1min 20s. If we refer back to the swimmer’s process goal of not breathing out of the turn, this goal is one of the steps to help them achieve their performance goal.

• Lastly, Outcome goals are the end result that the athlete is working towards, for example, getting a gold medal at Nationals.
  

Some key points to remember when settings goals:

(1) Focus on the goals you can control

•  Focus on process and performance goals you can control instead of focusing on the outcome
  
  

(2)  Write them down!

• Individuals who write down goals are more likely to achieve them then those who don’t write them down Writing down goals help to monitor your progress

(3)  Make them visible for you to read on a daily basis

• Ensure your list of goals is visible for you to read them a couple times a day (especially before training/competition) to remind you of your objectives.
  

If you have any questions regarding setting goals, please email Serena at serenamacleodsportpych@gmail.com