The Problem with Spring Motivation

It happens every September, and having been in this industry almost 25 years, I’ve seen it every year. As the days stretch out and the sun comes back, we all want to move again, the way we did before winter slowed us down.

We sign up for the running group, book three sessions a week, and tell ourselves this is the year we stay consistent. For a week or two it works, because motivation shows up fast, often before our body’s caught up to match it.

The problem is what we do with our motivation, not the motivation itself.

We mistake enthusiasm for capability.

Motivation is a feeling, sunlight and longer evenings and seeing people out and about fuels it, and it can turn up in a single morning.

Capability is different, it’s built by asking the body to adapt gradually over weeks, and it doesn’t care how good we feel in the moment.

We’ve all done the version where the first week back feels great, we’re moving well, sleeping better, energy’s up, so we push a bit harder in week two.

Then week three brings the tight calf, the cranky lower back, the thing that wasn’t there before we got enthusiastic.

That’s the gap between how ready we feel and how ready our body is, and that’s where spring setbacks live.

I don’t want you to feel less motivated, I want you to stop spending it all in the first two weeks.

Treat the excitement as fuel for consistency rather than intensity, let it carry you through the boring, gradual weeks instead of one big comeback session.

Next time I’ll get into what your tissues need before you ramp things up, so we can bridge that space between motivation and capability.