Confidence with anything is the best kind of motivation. The more that you perceive that you are benefiting from something and growing in confidence, the more likely you are to keep doing that activity. Therefore, having set your goals, it is important you use these to help build your confidence as your fitness improves.
The key confidence tips are very simple ones, but maybe not as easy to stick with! First, it is really important to have a simple outlook that forces you to always value what you have achieved already. Too often, when people are exercising, they only see what they have not achieved, and how far they are from their end goal. If you have set your goals well, and are reviewing regularly, you will be giving yourself a great opportunity to be proud of the progress you have made on each of the days carried out so far, or evaluate your programme if you are not making progress. Make sure you keep looking back to see how far you have come, and really take pride in this. If you can maintain that outlook it will be much easier for you to approach the next session full of the confidence you have built from making such good progress to date. You should use all of the positives around you to help build confidence. Focus on when someone tells you that you are looking fitter; notice how much fitter you feel as you climb stairs; be aware of how good your body feels as a result of regular exercise; be confident that your body is in better shape than many of the people you know. All of these kinds of little things begin to add up over time. Within your training sessions, take confidence from the small steps forward you take - more distance covered in your usual time; feeling fitter even though you have produced the same scores; being more consistent in your rhythm when rowing. Again, there are many small things you can focus on, so make sure you pat yourself
on the back for all of them.
As you set goals and achieve them, build a foundation of confidence. Don't just ignore the achievement of the goal - take the time to enjoy it! The more goals you can set, the more opportunity you have to build confidence.
Some people like to see progress, so you might want to keep graphs, or wall charts that show your progress over time, or how many metres you have rowed every week. Other people like to test themselves out from time to time with a specific session to see how far they have moved on. Whatever your preferred method of monitoring progress, make sure you do it! And importantly, work out how you have made the progress. If you know what you have achieved and how you have achieved it, then you should be confident that you can do more of the same. Simple ideas, simple to implement, but again you just have to build it in as part of your exercise time.
The more confidence you can take from your regular exercise, the more benefit you will get from your training programme, and many people report how they feel more confident in other areas of their life as a result of training regularly, so set yourself the challenge to see how far you can make your confidence epidemic spread!
