FROM A CHORE TO A GIFT
HELPING YOUR CLIENTS STAY MOTIVATED
FILEX 2017 PRESENTER
Using simple , evidence-based techniques you can help clients transform how they think about , and undertake , exercise .
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WORDS : DR MICHELLE SEGAR PhD
recently started a yoga and meditation habit because I knew that I would not be able to get myself to get up and exercise . However , I didn ’ t realise that I had also begun to look at yoga as a bit of a chore , even though it was an easygoing , ten-minute video .’
This email from Eric , who had just started reading my book No Sweat : How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness , zeroed in on a common problem for people who want to exercise : it feels like work . And even though Eric was actively seeking wellbeing , he was finding it hard to keep moving .
For fitness professionals , the holy grail of helping clients find and sustain their enjoyment of , and enthusiasm for , exercise often seems out of reach . In my own work , both as a behavioural sustainability researcher and a motivational fitness coach , I often hear the complaint that exercise ‘ feels like a chore ’ – or worse , ‘ I hate exercise but I know I should do it .’ Our challenge is to help our clients to transform that chore into a gift , and to then sustain that feeling of enjoyment over a lifetime .
There are a few key ways in which we can do this .
1 Listening to our body ’ s messages
My first question to clients is why they started their failed or failing fitness program . Almost always , their answer has to do with a doctor ’ s prescription to ‘ lose weight ’ or for ‘ health ’, or because they know it will be ‘ good ’ for them .
For Eric , this simple question about his ‘ why ’ for exercise triggered a progressive transformation in his thinking : ‘ It dawned on me that I should start looking at it as something fun rather than something necessary .’ And with that new way to frame his routine , everything changed :
‘ When I started the yoga video as usual , I started dancing a bit to the background dance track that the video plays before the instructor starts speaking . Then I remembered just how much I love to dance to fun music . I ended up dancing for a straight hour to various pop and hip-hop songs .’
Intuitively , Eric chose to follow his body ’ s real inclinations rather than the video ’ s instructions . This transformed everything .
Our bodies are always communicating with us , but most messages are simply screened out by the noise of daily life . We quickly learn to ignore the rest of the messages in the name of expediency ( our body aches and slow brains tell us that we ’ re tired , but we need to keep working so we put off rest until later ). When Eric paid attention to his body ’ s message to dance – even though rationally he felt on some level that he ‘ should ’ be doing yoga – it paid off big time .
2 Doing what feels good
Eric chose an optimal motivator when he did what he loved . This is something we already know intuitively , but is worth saying again out loud : we naturally want to do what feels good and avoid what feels bad . This seems like a no-brainer when it ’ s about food or sex , but when it comes to exercise many people feel that ‘ no pain , no gain ’ is an unbreakable rule . Yet in terms of sustainability , this old mantra does not work to keep people engaged with exercise .
When clients force their bodies to do something they don ’ t want to do ( an intense forty-minute workout after a full day at the office , for example ), the body sends a very different message : This is a chore that I don ’ t want to do ! If they ignore their body ’ s ‘ no ’ messages over
24 | NETWORK AUTUMN 2017