Fitness can be an escape from life. We can leave our stress at the gym’s entrance and find relief within. Although the work is put in with the body, the mind is the most worked part of ourselves. The synchronous strain between mind and body requires a willful submersion into the fitness flow. With it comes a shift from aimless movement to intentional performance.

1. Find Motivation

Your motivation is your mental fuel. Without it, every action will feel meaningless. Some people find motivation in physical or emotional turmoil. Others find it in a role model, loved one or passion. Whatever it may be, it is the reason you are beginning this journey towards a better version of yourself. Whenever you feel like giving up, it is your motivation and discipline that will push you to endure, not the pre-workout you drank an hour ago.

2. Set Goals

The next tip is to set step-by-step goals, with one that helps achieve another. Chart these out on your fitness map with a conquering mindset. Do not quit until you beat this challenge. The only person who can prevent you from realizing your goal is yourself. You are more responsible for your motivation to win than anyone else in your life. 

Between each goal, track your results and progress. These are your personal records. When it comes to this, it is important to track what matters too. Two crucial things to track are your workouts and your habits. Tracking these inform you on how you physically and mentally evolve throughout time. After months of work, you can look back on your Day 1 workouts and habits to see how far you’ve grown. It’s one thing to be tracking calories, but there are more important attributes of health that show where your strength is coming from.

3. Be Consistent

The step-by-step goals put you in a disciplined rhythm, but now you have to keep the momentum going. The third tip is to be consistent. Consistency comes from the patience with yourself to win properly. It’s going to take hard work and a lot of time to reach each goal. This will result from properly using your motivation for success.

Consistency doesn’t mean stagnation, however. It can be greatly beneficial to mix things up from time to time, shocking your muscles with new stimuli. If you’ve been doing the same exercises for legs every week, change the order of the exercises, try a new movement, or change the weight. This can further expose your weak points and give you something else to improve in. 

4. Reward Yourself

Now that the motivation is found to achieve your goals at a consistent pace, you’ve built a foundation of a winner’s mindset. You can find success in any aspect of your fitness flow from your newfound habits to your increased physical strength. This leads to the fourth tip: reward yourself. 

Achieving a goal is no small feat. We can play it off as humbly as we want, but there’s a side of us that’s proud. We recognize how much time and energy we’ve dedicated to improving ourselves. It’s a natural reaction, and we are allowed to reward ourselves. For some, that may be a new piece of clothing or a show you’ve been wanting to see. For others, it might be food.

Cheat meals are good in moderation. Food should be measured in quality, not quantity. The 80-20 Mentality comes to mind in terms of diet; 20% percent of your meals in a week can be “unhealthy” meals. Consistency will always be a better friend than perfection.

5. The Big Picture

So, you’ve built a winner’s mindset, achieved your results, and you’ve allowed yourself to be rewarded as you please. Now, you must understand the bigger picture of your fitness flow. Take a step back and ask yourself which made you more happy: the results or the process of obtaining the results? 

You may have reached your desired result and probably felt some temporary satisfaction. Suddenly, you realized your journey was more fun than the achievement itself. It turns out the journey is an achievement. So we aim for another target. One fitness flow seamlessly rolls into another. Fitness is about falling in love with the process, not the results. This is the process of building new habits. You earned it.