How to stay motivated?
How to maintain your motivation all year round?
Cycling is one of the most difficult sports there is.
I often compare it to football: try throwing yourself to the ground pretending to be in pain so that they let you win the race... in football you get a penalty and you win.
On a bike you have to ignore the pain and get back on your machine and give it your all to catch up with the riders in front!
Going for a ride when it's cold, rainy, or when you have a busy schedule: it's complicated.
How to stay motivated all year round?
Motivation is based on several complementary pillars.
Hello everyone,
Setting goals
Having one or more objectives for the year will allow you to set up a precise work program and benchmarks to follow to move forward.
This could be a sporting goal with a specific date, such as a race, a cyclo-sportive event, a big outing with friends, etc.
I wanted to do the stage of the tour 2016 for example. To get there I knew I had to lose weight to get through the passes in good conditions, I weighed more than 90 kg for 1.72 meters, it was way too much. So my goal was actually twofold: finish the stage of the Tour (when you live in Flanders, it's tense, eh!) and lose weight...
But your goal may simply be to lose weight!
Don't be afraid to set ambitious goals.
At first, I just wanted to finish my stage of the tour and not finish it by crossing the passes on foot... In view of my rapid progress over the first few months and the return of my twenty-year-old legs, I quickly revised my objective upwards: to finish in the top half of my age group!
After almost 25 years of not cycling, this is a big challenge!!!
Your goal must be measurable.
It's by measuring your progress that you'll understand why you've made so many sacrifices and find the strength to keep going. Conversely, if you're no longer making progress, it's time to sit down and analyze what's wrong, find your mistakes, and adjust your strategy.
Track and visualize your progress
“ lose weight or ride faster” is not enough and not detailed enough: reaching 75 kg or going out at more than 30 km/h is measurable.
Being in the top 2000 finishers of a cyclo-sportive event like the Tour de France stage is measurable.
Have tools to measure your progress!
Whether it's your performance or your weight, just seeing where you've come from and the work you've accomplished gives you a boost for the day.
Record your weight each week, plot it on a graph sheet or in Excel. If you don't have Excel, you have free Google tools that do the same job...
My personal weight loss tracking: the green line is the forecast, each week the actual weight loss in red.
I also did it in Excel and updated it every Monday. I managed an average loss per week and therefore followed the planned / actual delta week after week...
If you have a Samsung phone you can use the S Health app which also does the job of tracking your weight by giving you a weekly, monthly, etc. average.
You can still track your heart rate at rest: reflection of your fitness and the quality of your basic training.
There's an app for that!
Tracking my heart rate in SHealth, Samsung App
On my desk at work, I have a Tour de France stage flag. You can display your progress or weight chart on your fridge in the kitchen, for example. Always have your goal or its tracking in front of you; it's a great way to stay focused on it when everyday life catches up with you and tends to take you further away from the goal you want to achieve every day!
Visualize your progress : we cyclists love our legs, when they are tanned, finely carved, the veins visible, the thighs browned by the sun, visualize your legs at the end of your preparation. Imagine yourself once the objective has been reached or how you want to be when the time comes: in super shape crossing a mythical pass of the Tour de France , your children running towards you after the finish line of a huge cyclo. Mentally your brain will make the right choices when the time comes if you put yourself in this state of mind, you condition yourself to achieve this result.
“You become what you think and feel most of the time.”
Patrick Leroux (coach and motivation and performance professional)
Alberto Contador's leg on his Instagram account! This is what I want to look like! (without the scars)
From a purely athletic perspective, I also use Strava a lot to track my progress. I'll be dedicating a whole article to it soon. With Strava, it's easy to know where you're at on your usual routes in terms of performance!
You can track your performance on your favorite segments in terms of time, speed, estimated Watts: what more could you ask for? Either you have a Garmin-type GPS meter and you synchronize it when you return from the outing, or you get the app Strava on the Store …
When you do a solo outing like that at an average of 33.6 km/h when 12 months earlier you were barely topping out at 28 km/h, there's reason to be motivated, right?
Identify your strengths
Identifying your strengths and working on them will not only help you progress but will also boost your motivation.
I'm more of a puncher climber personally and my ability to climb hills of less than 2 km at a high pace is one of my strong points: I therefore work on specific training to be able to enjoy this aspect during my outings.
What a pleasure to be able to measure the progress made on your strengths: ranked 6th out of 650 in the general ranking of this Strava segment, a small 3% hill in the South of France. Excellent for motivation and not giving up!
I happened to catch up with a whole peloton of around 30 Belgian cyclists on a 2.3 km climb and finish with the first 5 who were all fitter than each other: morally it feels great!
Share to be supported and recognized
Another important pillar of motivation is sharing and recognition. Let people know what you're preparing or what you're in the process of achieving.
To family, friends, colleagues: not only will you be able to talk about it, but you will also receive spontaneous encouragement. No one is insensitive to performance or the results achieved.
When I go out for lunch at work and come back after an hour and a bit and someone asks me how many kilometers I've done: "Oh forty" I reply casually (...) You should see the faces of my non-sporty colleagues!
The weight loss is also very visible and everyone notices it. The messages and admiring remarks are good for morale and everyone knows: “cycling is in the mind!”
If you are lucky enough to have an understanding and supportive wife, she too will be able to find the words.
Living with an athlete who spends his free time away from home, comes home tired, with laundry to do, and who demands impeccable dietary hygiene (…) is no easy task! And on top of that, this charming other half must support us and be a motivating factor.
But when she knows how to do it, it's a huge advantage...
You will find in this sharing another powerful lever of motivation: you will not only do it for yourself but also for your children, your partner, to prove to your colleagues your will, etc.
Vary to avoid getting bored
Make sure to maintain your passion and desire. Vary your pleasures; don't always do the same type of outing, the same training sessions, or the same routes.
On the one hand, monotony will not bring you anything from a physiological point of view: the body adapts and needs stimuli to continue to progress, this is the basis of training.
On the other hand, mentally, you will get tired. Vary the routes, vary the training programs and themes, vary the disciplines (mountain biking, road, cyclo-cross, mountain, flat, racing, hiking, the world of cycling is vast...)
Even if you are training for a specific race, you can vary your outings: short intense outings, long, thorough outings, outings to work on strength, outings to work on speed, outings to measure your fitness over a given segment, etc.
Finally, if you are really physically and/or psychologically saturated, don't be afraid to take a break for a few days. The winter break or micro breaks throughout the year will allow you to recharge your batteries and replenish your energy to get going again and continue your progress.
In summary:
- Visualize your goal (a photo) and display it in a place where you are all the time
- Measure your progress and display it (performance graph)
- Regularly make a list of your strengths and work on them.
- Condition your brain by rereading your goals, list of strengths and best performances as often as possible.
Finally, you will inevitably have periods of doubt or loss of motivation throughout the year, this is normal, but don't give up. So adopt the winning behavior that will make the difference: repeat the 4 points above one by one.
Changing your body and your performance is above all changing your state of mind.