How to find cycling motivation?
2020 season and the beginning of 2021 was for sure one big “unknown”. Many people asked me why even to ride a bike, they couldn’t find the motivation to keep going with training plans or simply doing the cycling. But there is a way to prepare for this kind of events and stay focus no matter what!
According to one of the greatest psychologists of our times Victor Frankl, motivation comes from having a clear “why” so you can overtake any “how”.
And I do agree with that.
But who to set up your “why”? It is a very personal thing, and you have to think about why you want to ride your bike, get better, faster, and fitter. I can give you few examples.
- Lose weight
- Be healthier
- Win the race in your category
- Keep up with friends on the group ride
- Be able to ride during a 7-day vacation in the mountains
- Prepper for states championships
- Be in the top 3 in nationals
Those are clear goals that will help you to achieve them just by setting them up. Having a long-term goal is a good way to find motivation during worse moments, weeks, or evens entire season (2020 shot down).
But that is not entirely answering the question “why” are you doing it.
- Are you doing it for yourself too because you like to win or just get better every day?
- Maybe you do it to impress others
- Or be the inspiration for others so they can leave healthier too
Those are more meaningful “why” reasons, that will keep your motivation even higher if you constantly have them in your mind. You can see that “why” and goals aline together. Having clear “why” and goals can help you with long-term motivation and meaningful life. If you have those setups, the next step is to do reverse engineering. Going backward you can find out where should you be halfway to your main goal for example if your goal is to be a National champion in your age category in 10 years, where you have to be in 5 years to be able to achieve it? And where you have to be in 1-2 years to be on the right track to your 5 years goal.
Going farther you plan your season, specific periods, weeks, and daily routine that will allow you to get to the final point. Cycling motivation that is built with strong funds like that will overtake any “how”, small “bumps” on the road won’t take away your main goal which is far away but you have a clear path on how to get there.
I hope it will help you develop long-term cycling motivation! You can get our Cycling Guide and fill out long and short-term goals to keep you focus for a long time.
