Finding Your Fitness “Why”

By: Allyson Priano 

Throughout every fitness journey, there are going to be peaks, valleys and even plateaus that will hit you when you least expect it. But, one thing is essential to remember throughout your day-to-day training, and that is why you embarked on this journey in the first place.

For every member at Uncanny, beginning their Fitness journey—whether it started at Uncanny, or at a previous box—was the first step in making a commitment to being a better version of themselves. The reasons for starting this fitness journey will be different for everyone. Some may have initially set out to lose weight, gain strength, or just get in better shape. Whatever it may have been that got you to this point in your journey, and at Uncanny Fitness, it is always important to remind yourself why you’re continuing to push yourself every day, in and out of the gym.

As many who have been on their fitness journey for a while now know, the path towards reaching your goals is never easy. It takes a lot of hard work, dedication, discipline and time. Nothing happens overnight, especially in Fitness. The Fitness Games athletes that you see or follow on social media didn’t reach the level of fitness that they’re at by taking shortcuts.

The lifting PRs and gymnastics skills that many of those athletes post to their Instagram aren’t as easy to achieve as they make it look. Often, it’s the missed lifts, the shitty training sessions and the struggles they deal with between the ears that those athletes do not share that deserve the most recognition. In fact, maybe the reason some of those athletes are posting so many positive pics or videos about themselves is to find some motivation through the work they’re putting into their training? Maybe those athletes, like us “regular” Fitness athletes, struggle with finding motivation and fail to remember their “why” every now and then?

While this may not be the case for all those athletes—and sharing a PR you recently achieved every now and then is completely deserved—for some of us, we need to be reminded why we started this fitness journey in the first place. But, to find your “why” you may need to dig a bit deeper than the motivational cues you see on social media or receive from your coaches when they tell you “good lift,” or “great job!”

Sure, coaches can motivate us with their words, actions, and thoughts. But those motivational things don’t drive us to and from the gym,  nor do they fix the food that meets our macros or diet, and they don’t turn the TV off early so you can get the few extra hours of sleep your body needs to take on the next day. Only you can do those things for yourself. What all of us really need to find is where our motivation stems from—our passion for what we do and why we do it.

To meet your end potential at anything in life, and meet the end results you’re seeking, you need to be passionate about the process to achieve those end goals. This “trust the process” approach to your fitness can extend to any part of your life. Meaning, that if you put in the work, day in and day out, take the time to get better (not just wish for those double unders or muscle ups to happen), then you’re going to see the results. If you love what you’re doing, and love the process of finding a way, then you’re going to continue the journey you started and keep going.

But if you’re trying and not putting in the work like you know you should be (a.k.a. just showing up), then your end goal will get further away from you. Are you passionate about what you’re doing and why you’re at Uncanny? Is fitness, your job, being a good dad/mom/son/sister/etc. a part of who you are and does it make you strive to be better every day? If yes, then keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re not sure, then maybe it’s time to reassess what you really want out of this journey for yourself. And, that is okay. The point here is to look beyond the motivation because those factors don’t necessarily stick.

Start searching for what drives you to be passionate about coming into the gym, find your “why.” Write your “why” down several times over on sticky notes and post them in places you know you’ll look—your bathroom mirror, in your gym bag, on your car dashboard. Even set a reoccurring reminder in your phone with your “why.” Sure, some of that may sound a bit overkill. But, trust me, when training days get tough, and life gets in the way, which both will, you may start to ask yourself “why am I doing this?” or find excuses to not even show up to the gym at all. It is easy to find a reason not to do something. What takes strength is seeing something through.

So, when you get down on yourself about why you can’t hit a lift, why you’re too tired to go to the gym after a long day of work, or why you stayed up too late watching The Office re-runs, remember the most important “why” that started you on your fitness journey. That “why” should always outweigh all the other whys. Own your “why” and let it fuel the fire you have inside of you to reach the goals you set out to achieve.

Get after it.