Motivation

Easily the most important thing about working out is not the physical exercises. The most important thing about working out is your motivation.

Without a healthy motivation, the best workout routine in the world is useless. Even if you grind it out, like Sisyphus pushing a giant bolder of negative thoughts up the hill, in the end you'll more likely see that boulder roll all the way back down. Meaning, yeah you made it thru today with low motivation, but how inspired are you to tackle the next workout tomorrow? Factors that contribute to bad motivation don't go away in a day, very likely those same issues will need to be fought thru again the next day.

So how to deal with low motivation?

I know people will freak out about this, but sometimes the only way to clear it out is to just stop working out for a while. Take a day or two off, It might be your lack of motivation is because you're been going to much. Your mind needs a break just as much as your body.
Another method I've used is the 10 minute rule. When motivation is low, I tell myself to suit up and just do a 10 minute workout. After 10 minutes I can stop any time I want and consider the workout a success. This takes the burden off my mind to grind one out, and a lot of times I find that after working out for 10 minutes my motivation resuscitates and I can go for 20 or 30 minutes, sometime longer.
The last trick has to do with being in the middle of a workout and suddenly I don't want to do anymore. When that happens I slow down the intensity, sometimes dramatically. If the workout calls for 25 reps, I'll do only 5 or 10. If I'm really tapped I'll drop the reps down to a single one. Anybody can do 1 rep. This serves to give my motivation a break, and again after dropping the intensity I find the motivation begins to return and I can get back to full speed again.
For me, motivation is at it's peak early in the day. After lunch it begins to drop and by evening I'm pretty much out of motivation. My goal has become to get a workout in before lunch, otherwise I'm going to have get all Rambo on myself and declare in no uncertain terms a workout (even a 10 minute workout) will be done. But you gotta be careful about Rambo mode - it becomes less effective the more you have to rely on it. I find it best to save that for those situations where life keeps wanting to interfere with your workout routine.

It's all a mind game, really. And it is very true - you can have the best of everything - workout plan, trainers, equipment, time... all of it is meaningless if your motivation is missing.

You have to guard your motivation, monitor it, understand what consumes it and what produces it. How is you motivation early in the day as opposed to later, or even at night? What is your strategy for doing a workout when you have zero motivation?

Lots of ideas for maintaining a healthy motivation.

Here's my list of workouts:

P90
P90X
Body Beast
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