4 Tips To Motivate Your Partner To Do Sports
Any physical activity is more enjoyable when you do it with someone else. If you don’t like training alone, there’s always the alternative option: motivate your partner to do sports.
Training with a partner has many advantages that are impossible to achieve when training on your own. Not only is the performance better, but there’s also greater satisfaction. Additionally, it represents a wonderful opportunity to bond with another person.
How to motivate your partner to exercise
Beyond the advantages of training in pairs, doubts or indecisions can delay the start of this type of training. To motivate your partners to play sports, you have to know them deeply.
In other words, you have to know what their goals are and what they want to achieve with their training. Likewise, you can put into practice some simple tips that we’ll list below.
1. Set goals together: motivate your partner to do sports
Setting realistic and achievable goals is the foundation for motivation. Moreover, you get an extra point for commitment and determination when your partner is the one who sets their own goals instead of them being imposed by someone else.
To motivate your partner to exercise, you need to have their input when setting goals. These don’t have to be the same for both persons, but the more you share goals, the greater the motivation.
You can establish basic goals that both of you can share; such as having a good time, pushing yourselves until the end, or training for half an hour every day. With that in mind, each person can develop more specific goals based on one’s personal level or progress.
2. Reinforce every advancement you complete
We all like to be congratulated when we do things well. Positive reinforcement, especially when it comes from another person, is a powerful stimulus that fuels the desire to keep trying.
For this reason, it’s very important to recognize each progress that you make as a couple. This is the only way you’ll ensure that the other person not only enjoys the training, but also understands that it has value and provides positive consequences for them.
In relation to the above, positive reinforcement also positively influences other variables related to exercise, such as adherence. This was proven by an article published in the Spanish Journal of Public Health.
3. Propose several alternatives to choose from
Motivation also comes from doing something that’s enjoyable and entertaining. On the other hand, in order to motivate people to carry out a task that they don’t like, one has to resort to an external reward. This isn’t advisable since the objective is to internalize the behavior of exercising in such a way that a person can maintain it even if there aren’t any rewards.
One way to increase internal motivation is to propose several options and let your partner choose the one they like the most. For example, you can propose aerobic activities such as swimming, rope jumping, or dancing for cardiovascular training.
4. Establish a joint training routine: motivate your partner to do sports
Commitment is an essential part of motivation; we can’t understand one without the other. Hence, an effective way to motivate your partner is to work on the commitment to the training routine. To do this, t he first thing you have to do is set up a training schedule. If you organize the training in a systematic way, it’ll take less effort to execute the tasks.
Additionally, it’s also good to establish what is known as “points of no return” to strengthen the commitment. This means to set distinctive signals or stimuli that indicate that, once you complete a certain task, there’s no turning back. For example, if the chosen activity is going out for a run, you can’t cancel the training once you tie your shoelaces.
Motivate your partner to do sports and change their habits
Encouraging your partner to lead a more active lifestyle is an act of caring. It means that you care about their health and that you care about their well-being, both physical and mental.
Besides that, exercising together can be the beginning to establishing other healthy habits and taking care of yourselves together. If you train together, you can also review your diets and other habits that influence your health. Taking care of yourselves as a couple feels much better!
All cited sources were thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, currency, and validity. The bibliography of this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.
- Perula de Torres, L. A., Lluch, C., Ruiz Moral, R., Espejo Espejo, J., Tapia, G., y Mengual Luque, P. (1998). Prevalencia de actividad física y su relación con variables sociodemográficas y ciertos estilos de vida en escolares cordobeses. Revista española de salud pública, 72, 233-244.
