I try to set goals that work toward my Mt Suff. So, rewarding myself with a burger doesn’t really help, but setting a goal of 3x meditation sessions a week, and a reward of a bath at the end of the week, that works better.
Other examples are to do 95%+ of the training program in a month (reward a piece of kit for my Mt Suff).
Smaller weekly rewards are sometimes food based, but with a twist. There’s these lovely pastries near my house, and now my daughter eats it instead of me. So my reward is to buy one and watch her enjoy it.
My Mt Suff is to ride to another city over 7 days (roughly 180km a day), so another weekly reward is to watch a bike packing movie/ YouTube video.
What else… oh yeah, monthly reward of doing an exploratory ride that follows the twisty residential coastline and bays, rather than a hardcore training ride.
And I love those clif shot blox, but they’re expensive for what they are. So a weekly reward is to get one of them, or a fancier organic oat bar for a longer ride, rather than my dreary regular options.
I can relate to what you say to a certain extent. I think I’m a very competitive person, and all my sports life I drew my motivation from competition.
My wife is the “staying fit for the sake of staying fit” kind of person. She tried quite a few times to talk me into applying this attitude, which usually results in me moving over to Couchlandria completely, then getting terribly frustrated after just a few weeks, if not days.
Without a big goal I will stop moving, without moving I will not be a happy person.
Now with all this said, I’m far from being a professional athlete, and all my early goals were about beating the clock. One of my first big goals was running the 10k under 40 min, and with not a lot of understanding of training concepts, it took me years to finally achieve it. It was only much later when I could look at rankings (top 10%, then top 10 at some point, just in recent years collecting a few podiums in smaller local races).
My point is, while I did need competition in my goal setting process, it was still a lot about mere numbers. And while I understand why you feel like “I can ride 200k” or “I increased my FTP by another 5%” are artificial and perhaps boring goals, they are more “honest” metrics of what you have achieved as an athlete. We all can win a race, as long as we just select our opponents carefully enough. It might look cool to stand on the top of a podium, but at the end of the day, as long as it’s not the World Championship you win, it’s only so meaningful. And while I’m not immune to the pride of winning a race, I still prefer running a new pb and finishing 20th over winning the race with a poor performance. Winning it with a new pb and a 1 sec gap to the runner-up is the best feeling in the world of course
That’s my 2 cents when it comes to goal setting. As for rewards, I currently cannot put remotely as much time into training as I would love to. So, eating more chocolate is really not what I want to reward myself with, and what I actually want as reward, training more, is not compatible with life these days. Hence my approach, seeing the Hawaii qualifier as my huge reward at the end of the road.
This is what works for me - sometimes. But as others said, this whole process is highly individual. You will have to figure out what triggers you, and what sustainably keeps you going. Covid, I agree, is an extra challenge. Big setback for my swimming ambitions for instance.
Stay with it a bit longer, or spend a bit more time thinking about why you train and ride a bike before continuing with the plan. If it helps think of why you choose a certain plan, what comes into your mind now when you are struggling through an interval that keeps you pushing on. It could just be the satisfaction of knowing you can do it, in which case use that to form the basis of your goals. They don’t have to be winning races or hitting certain numbers.
Hey Erick,
Sorry none of us from the sport science team have got back to you sooner!
Great to see you are setting goals for your habits and rewards is definitely a great motivator to stay on track! Personally I find stats a great motivator, so for example if I have set myself 5 sessions a week and i complete all of these this is a great short term reward as i tell myself I am being consistent with my training and getting fitter and stronger. So then every 6-8 weeks if I check my 4dp numbers or weight it is a re-enforcement that I am moving in the right direction and keeps me going.
Sir @emacdoug has some great suggestions of ways you can reward yourself and it is great to hear from everyone as we are all motivated by different things.
