Fitness Motivation Redux 2025

Before we begin, I want to put in a disclaimer that reading this is as useless as reading my previous posts on fitness motivation here and here. You should just close this page and read this short article by Henry Rollins, which I believe to be the best piece on this topic ever written (that I have read). There's also this which is an excellent read.

I don't really like talking about "motivation". Have written about this here too. I don't think it exists. Full grown adults shouldn't require reading my or any other person's writing to do something they know they need to do. You are not a child. I'd say if you still need "motivation", you are beyond help. "You wake up & just do things. It should be routine." I have written this in the past. Self-help content is for the lazy. Wow, This is turning out to be a rude article and basically a synthesis of what I have already written previously. The whole fitness motivation is a solved problem already though. Let me expand on this a bit more anyway.

We only get one body. This is where we will spend our time on earth. I would really like to push it to its limits, see what I am capable of achieving. It would be total vanity to not find out how strong you could be, what limits you could reach. Would be a disgrace to die without giving it your all. As an adult, it is also my job and my duty to be strong for my family and myself. Training helps you prepare mentally for the challenges in life. You handle work and family stress better. It carries over. You are a role model to your children. If you love them, wouldn't you want to be in the best position possible to do everything you can for them? Being unfit limits you. You age badly, you become a burden to yourself and your people. It is easy to dismiss this younger, but it catches up to you. Our bodies eventually break down. At 30, 40, definitely 80 years. The goal should be to postpone that age so you can get most work in to accumulate wealth, give love to your children. And it is not a pain. It is not a sacrifice to not be fit. In fact, fitness is incredible rewarding. You set goals in the gym and work towards them. You have greater goals than most, nobler as you are improving your health in your earlier days and then maintaining. Getting a new PR in the gym is amazing. Eating healthy food is amazing. You feel better. You move better. You can travel better. You work better. It is in fact, quite deranged to not do these things and indulge in not training, to eat garbage.

You can then stand up for yourself better. You have self-respect. I'd trust a fit person over an unfit person given all other things seem same. Because that person is doing their job, if an unfit person can't get these basic things right, they can't get most other things right. I often see people mock me for my choices re health. When I refuse a sweet. I'd rather die than live like those people, I can look at them and tell they are in terrible shape and I'd be miserable (rightly so) if I was them. And well, most of them are, they just don't know. You steal away your own joy and limit what you can do when you abandon your duty.

I don't pump myself up for a workout. I simply do it. No cameras, no show-business. It is like eating food, brushing teeth, sleeping at night. Just another thing to do. A serious person won't think about this. They would also learn about working out. They would commit for life. They would then research how to improve workouts and eat so they can do all of this without external help like trainers. We have everything available now, especially with AI. Why would any serious person outsource these things? Every serious person whom I know simply does their workout. Nobody wakes them. Nobody "motivates" them. They learnt their craft. They know they will never stop. They just do it.

In the end, my whole rant is useless. Someone will read it, then go on about their day. Nothing really changes. A serious person would already know everything I have written, just in a different language. All these words are just words. But I wrote this anyway to articulate and document. This article is simply a reference in guise of a "motivational" post.