A 2025 narrative review published in Frontiers in Psychology confirmed something most serious athletes sense but rarely articulate: intrinsic motivation - the kind that comes from personal satisfaction, self-determination, and genuine love of the process - produces more sustained and profound improvements in performance than extrinsic motivation driven by rewards, recognition, or social pressure.

The distinction matters more than people think. Extrinsic motivation isn't bad, but it produces short-term results and plays a larger role in team environments where social reinforcement is constant. But for individual athletes, or anyone training alone without a crowd watching, intrinsic motivation is the engine.

Here's the part that most athletes miss: the researchers also found that motivation isn't fixed, it's dynamic and situational. Your drive on any given day shifts based on environment, autonomy, and whether your basic psychological needs are being met. Which means the strategies you use to get yourself out the door on a bad day aren't just willpower tricks. They're tools for activating the right motivational system.

The six strategies below are exactly that. ¹

The same psychology that keeps athletes training consistently applies directly to brand building: identity-based habits beat motivation-based habits every time. Research on behavioral consistency suggests that people who attach their actions to who they are - rather than how they feel - show up more reliably over time. If you're building a personal brand, the fastest way to stay consistent isn't a content calendar. It's deciding you're someone who shows up, films, and posts - even on the bad days. The first 30 seconds of a video nobody watches teaches you more than a month of thinking about filming.

Many athletes struggle with motivation at some point. Whether you're exhausted, running on poor sleep, or dealing with some form of disruption in your life, there will be moments when you simply don't want to go out and train.

Generally speaking, athletes tend to lean toward one of two motivational profiles: internally motivated or externally motivated. Externally motivated athletes thrive when others are watching. Without a coach, a crowd, or some form of external reward - physical or psychological - the pull to train alone weakens considerably. Internally motivated athletes, on the other hand, are often stronger training alone. I fall into that camp 95% of the time. During my footballing career, I genuinely loved solo sessions. I sometimes found group training more frustrating than useful.

But even for someone wired that way, there were days when my motivation wasn't there. Over time, I developed six strategies that helped me work through it and get my ass out to the pitch or gym.

On a serious note, this isn't about ego… it's about identity. Because I IDENTIFY as someone who shows up every day, it’s no longer an option to train or not. Consistency, hard work, and showing up are core values of mine. And because they're core values, skipping isn't really an option. It's not about what I feel like doing in a given moment. It's about who I've decided I am. Emotions aside, I'm going out because that's the kind of person I am. Full stop.

This shift came from my work with Dr. Cassidy Preston at CEP Mindset. I started spending real time mentally preparing for sessions - not just physically getting ready, but putting myself in a constructive headspace before I even touched a ball. I genuinely believe that mental preparation is as important as the session itself. When you walk in with positive emotions and a clear mental picture of what a good session looks like, you bias yourself toward the behaviors that create it. If I go in expecting to struggle, I'll notice every mistake. If I go in expecting to grow, I'll find moments of growth. The preparation and framing shapes the experience.

Simple, but effective. I kept a list on my phone of local players - not all at my level, but talented athletes who had trained with me before. On days I was going to go it alone and wasn't sure I had the mental gas for it, I'd text a few names and see who was available. Having another person there changes the energy entirely, especially if you're competitive. Even someone below your level creates the right conditions: a little friction, a little accountability, something to push against. Most skill drills in a team sport simply work better with another person present - training in unpredictable conditions just like a match. 

This one reframes what training actually is. Showing up for your development doesn't always mean going to the pitch. Sometimes the most disciplined decision you can make is choosing to rest: deliberately, intentionally, and without guilt. I've dealt with overuse injuries firsthand - torn abdominal muscles requiring major surgery, a broken foot from training in the wrong gear. Those don't happen overnight. One of the underappreciated symptoms of overtraining is the dread and negativity you feel toward training in the first place. Your body is communicating something. Active rest - proper sleep, recovery work, mental decompression - is part of the equation. The catch is you have to own the decision completely. Half-resting while feeling guilty isn't rest. It's just a bad training day with no upside. If your body is genuinely asking for it, give it what it needs and trust that the next session will be better for it. 

They really don't. Whether the goal is going professional, securing a contract, earning a scholarship, or whatever the benchmark is - that goal has no emotional relationship with how motivated you felt on a Tuesday afternoon in February. Achieving it is simply the cumulative result of a long equation filled with completed sessions and matches. Feelings are not inputs in that equation. When I was struggling to get myself out the door, I reminded myself: the goal only cares whether the session happened or not. I can take the right actions without judgment, without enthusiasm, without a particularly good performance - and still move the equation forward. That reframe made it easier to detach action from emotion.

On a number of occasions, I found that the right music could override what my brain was telling me about being tired or unmotivated. I'd spend about twenty minutes going through a shuffled playlist to find the genre that resonated with what I needed - sometimes it was metal, sometimes something harder. Music triggers genuine physiological responses. Your heart rate changes. Your body chemistry shifts. Your brain starts receiving signals that contradict the story it was telling you five minutes ago. It doesn't always work, but when other methods fell short, this was a great reset button.

The important thing to remember is that all six of these strategies are either proxies for your "why" or triggers of it. Some will work for you. Some won't. The goal isn't to memorize the list - it's to start experimenting until you know which levers actually move you. Once you know your "why" clearly enough, stacking these tools around it becomes instinctive. And on the days when nothing works? Go back to strategy one. You're not a quitter. You go because that's who you are.

Which of these six strategies have you already used - and which one are you going to try the next time you hit a wall?

If this resonated with you, share it with an athlete in your life who's been navigating one of those stretches where showing up feels harder than it should. They might need to hear it today.

Stay dangerous,