Why you train matters more than how much
Pedro Teixeira and colleagues reviewed 66 studies on exercise and self-determination theory, published up to June 2011. The theory sorts motivation by where it comes from: a reward or punishment from outside, your own self-approval or guilt, a goal you personally value, or the fun of the activity itself.
The more a reason was your own, the more consistently it went with actually exercising. Training to get a reward or avoid trouble never showed a positive link in their multivariate analyses. Training out of guilt helped in 30% of them and did nothing in most of the rest.
- Reward or pressureFrom outside 0%
- Guilt or prideSelf-approval 30%
- You value itYour own goal 74%
- You like itThe activity itself 62%
Positive link No link Negative link
Start for a reason, stay because you like it
The review saw a trend over time. Identified motivation, where you exercise because you value what it gives you, predicted getting started more strongly. Intrinsic motivation, where the activity itself is the point, predicted sticking with it for the long term.
The authors describe intrinsic motivation as enjoyment, using your skills, a sense of accomplishment and excitement, and they note that people also exercise for the challenge. Feeling competent showed up again and again as a predictor too, so pick a goal you can actually hit.
- Getting started You value what it gives you
- The long run You like doing it
- Enjoyment
- Using your skills
- Accomplishment
- Excitement
- Challenge
✓Feeling competent predicted exercise across samples and settings
A week when you don't feel like it
You will have days with no motivation at all. In Pushgard, the goal is weekly: one and a half times your max a day, for five days. With a max of 20 push-ups and one exercise on Easy, that’s 150 push-ups a week. The day’s plan is what’s left of the week, split over the days you have left.
Try it below: tap the days you skip. The week counts five training days out of seven, so one or two skipped days don’t change the plan. Skip more, and what’s missing spreads over the days you have left. Each week also has two rest days. You take one with a tap, and the streak stays. A third miss breaks it.
Tap a day to skip it or bring it back
150/ 150
0/ 2
5
Max of 20 push-ups, one exercise, Easy. On a training day you do exactly the day plan.
Stopping early is not losing
Each fight in Pushgard is a monster that your counted reps hit. If you run out of strength before it falls, you can leave. The monster heals its wounds slowly, at a pace that would bring it back to full health in 24 hours.
Monsters you already killed in a pack stay dead. So a short set on a bad day still moves you forward, and you can finish the rest tomorrow. That’s the idea behind exercise snacks too: a few reps now count for something.
✓Killed monsters stay dead
A goal sized to your own max
The weekly goal comes from your own measured max at the start of the week, so a beginner and a strong lifter both get a goal they can reach. On Easy with one exercise, a max of 10 push-ups means 75 a week, and a max of 30 means 225. A new record raises the goal from the next week, not in the middle of one.
If you can’t do 8 clean push-ups yet, start with push-ups for beginners on a box or your knees. Pick a starting point where you’ll win most days. Liking the activity is what kept people going in the review, and it’s hard to like something you fail at every day.
- Max 5 38
- Max 10 75
- Max 20 150
- Max 30 225
150→180
From next week, not this one
