“Man, it’s dark when I start working and it’s dark when I’m done. I had to watch the sunset from a meeting room today.”
A Beyond Strength member recently said that to me at the end of class. While he still made it to the gym that day, he outlined why a lot of folks struggle to keep their training momentum going while working out during the winter.
It’s cold.
It’s dark.
No one would fault you for cozying up on the couch and barreling through movies and entire seasons of popular shows like Murder She Wrote, Who’s The Boss, and The Wonder Years. Your sweats are nice and warm. The couch has a gravitational pull on your ass.
It’s cold.
It’s dark.
Angela Lansbury is on the case.
Anyone can fall into this trap, even high-performing folks. So, we need defenses against the couch’s gravity and the cozy comfort of well-worn sweats.
While no one can keep you moving besides you, I’ll outline several tools to muster you against waning training momentum and lack of training motivation.
We’ll begin with an event.
Winter Workout Tool 1: Put an Event on the Calendar
Bailing on training is easy when you have no reason to train. You have nothing to hope for. You have nothing to fear.
Viktor Frankl got it right many years ago when he said, “Man needs not a tensionless state, but a striving toward some worthy goal.” We’re happiest and most content when we’re trying to accomplish something. That’s because we get the most reward when we feel progress toward a goal rather than when we achieve the goal. It doesn’t seem like it should work that way, but that’s how it works, friend. Dopamine is designed for progress more than achievement. So, if you want to feel good during the winter, and maintain your training momentum, give yourself something to strive toward.
That is, however, only one-half of the tensioned state we need. We’re wired for reward by moving forward, but we’re wired even more strongly to avoid negative consequences. And we best take full advantage of that.
For example, if you sign up to do an adventure race with your friend, and you don’t train hard enough for it, you’re going to have a bad time. You know that. Your friend knows that. Tony from Who’s the Boss knows that. Avoiding the pain and displeasure of feeling like hot garbage covered in baby diapers on race day is often enough to get folks out of bed to lace up their running shoes. Add in the social pressure of not letting down your friend, and you really have something.
But you don’t have anything, not the reward of moving toward your goal every time you hit the gym, or the fear of getting your ass kicked, if you don’t put anything on the calendar.
No event, no tension.
The couch has a better shot at sucking you in.
Here’s the deal, though. It’s best if it’s a meaningful event.
Meaningful might mean that it’s attached to something you care about, like a cause or a type of exercise. And it might mean that it offers a sufficient challenge for you to take it seriously. No matter which form the meaning takes, make sure it’s there.
Winter Workout Tool 2: Remember Your Why
I’m not talking about your why like why an event might be meaningful. I’m talking about your WHY why. Like, what’s making you tick. The Japanese folks on the Okinawan peninsula have a word for this kind of why—ikigai. Think of it as your driving purpose.
Years ago, I landed on mine. It’s to Pay My Rent.
I came up with it after an Uber ride in Chicago. I chatted with my driver, who was a lovely woman. I wish I could remember her name. She told me about her daughter. The girl was about to graduate high school and, according to her mother, didn’t have her shit together. It seemed as though the daughter was setting herself up to live a shallow, sensation-driven life. Mom wasn’t having that trash.
We talked and talked, finding that we agreed on most things—how her daughter could find purpose, and how beautiful life is despite everything we could be spiteful about. Amid that conversation, she made a statement that cut to the core of human existence.
“Honey, you have to do something useful and meaningful with your life. That’s the rent you pay for your time here.”
I just got the same chill up my spine as I wrote those words that I did when she said them to me as we wove through Chicago traffic. What a beautiful statement.
That was it.
I wished I could ride around with her for hours. But I was expected at my friend Mike’s house, and she had her life to live. But her words etched themselves on my heart.
Pay. Your. Rent.
That became my ikigai. I’d do interesting things and use those experiences to be as useful as possible. Whenever I feel resistance when writing, I remember that I made a commitment to pay my rent. Whenever I’m unsure about whether I should hop on the plane and go do the thing, I ask if it’ll help me pay my rent. If the answer’s yes, I go.
How does this relate to winter workouts?
Well, when motivation is low, we need reminders of why we’re here to drive us forward. I know that for me to fully pay my rent, I need my body and mind to hold up for as long as possible. So, even though it’s dark, even though a cold fog hangs over the street when I step out of my door, I fight the inertia of a warm bed and I get going. I’m not leaving a debt behind. I’m paying my rent.
What are you going to do?
Winter Workout Tool 3: Have a Conversation with Future You
Part of what makes my ikigai work is I know that 85-year-old me will be annoyed with 37-year-old me if I don’t give life my best damn shot. But I also know that 85-year-old me will still want a full life. He’ll want to hunt, take pictures, and hopefully play with a couple of grandkids. And he won’t be able to do that if he doesn’t have the body to do it. So, I have a chat with 85-year-old me every once in a while. I ask him if I should really care about something that happened, and if he says it doesn’t matter, I listen to him.
I also talk to him about how my decisions might accumulate. What’ll happen to us if I don’t save enough money now? He gives me a stern look and reminds me that I know what I need to do. And I ask him about training on the days that I don’t feel like doing it and I know that my feelings are bullshit. He says if we want to move when I’m his age, we better move now. As Jeff Olson illustrated in his book of the same name, there’s a slight edge to everything. That slight edge could accumulate along a line of bad habits and poor decisions that lead to unfortunate finances and health. Or it could accumulate along a line of good decisions that end in physical and financial wealth.
Talking to older me when the inertia hits heavy reminds me that every day is either a vote for the future I want or one I’ll loathe. So, when I don’t feel like doing anything, I ask him what he thinks. He says to do what you can with what you have right now. It doesn’t have to be perfect it just has to happen. And I listen to him.
It might help if you check in with your 85-year-old self and see what they have to say. I bet they’ll have some tough love that you need to hear on those dark, gloomy days when it’d be easier to eat breads and cakes and get all fat and sassy.
Winter Workout Tool 4: Accept Reality
I’ll level with you, this article got far deeper than I intended. But I’m happy that it did. This is the real shit that we all need to keep moving when we’d rather be comfortable. I have one more series of deep thoughts for you.
One thing that makes winter far worse is wishing it was summer. It’s an easy thing to do. Warmth, in most cases, feels better than cold. And tanning your buns is often a lot nicer than freezing them. But wishing doesn’t change anything, it just creates a gap between reality and desire. That gap leads to negative thoughts which lead to negative actions, like skipping the gym or the walk or the run.
When we accept that it’s cold and that’s fine, we just do what we need to do to deal with it. Sometimes that’s mentally bolstering ourselves for a few months of it getting dark by 5pm. Sometimes it’s nothing more than putting on another layer and going for the walk.
At its best, however, it’s contentment. It’s feeling a little sting on your cheeks and thinking, man, that’s how it should be right now. It’s the rewarding feeling of warming your bones after a cold walk, knowing that most folks wouldn’t do what you just did. I’m not saying you have to feel this way, but it’s not a bad thing to aim at.
Our minds stay in a much better place when we accept things we can’t change without wishing they were different. That mindset shift helps the momentum flow during the winter months because you’re not fighting reality. You’re rolling with it.
Don’t Let the Cold and the Dark Beat You
It’s cold. It’s dark. Who cares? You have an event on the calendar that you’re excited about, that you know you need to prep for, so you don’t get your ass kicked. You know why you’re doing what you’re doing, and those conversations with future you offer a healthy perspective. Rather than wishing things are different, you’re rolling with them. Instead of floundering training momentum during the winter months, you’re building it.
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