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The Science-Backed Way to Get Your Exercise Motivation Back
Your workouts might look and feel a bit different — but that’s okay
Two months ago, I hopped on the New Year’s resolution bandwagon and set a goal of getting back into shape. I signed up for a month of unlimited yoga classes and started cycling again.
But then the coronavirus pandemic happened. Suddenly I was tired and unmotivated. Seeing friends doing workouts together on Zoom and sharing time-lapse videos of their bodyweight routines on Instagram just made me feel worse. A nagging shoulder injury started to flare up again as my muscles tightened, erasing all the progress I had made since January, but it wasn’t enough to get me off the couch. I just didn’t feel like working out.
If, like me, the coronavirus totally threw you into neutral, here’s the good news: Feeling like crap is totally normal.
“Anybody who’s not feeling some anxiety and some fears right now is probably not in touch with what’s going on in the world,” says Richard M. Ryan, PhD, co-developer of the Self-Determination Theory (SDT), a leading and internationally recognized theory of human motivation.
But to understand why — and how you can break free from this funk — you have to dive a bit deeper into the science of motivation.
