Losing interest in your Martial Arts training will happen to every Student at some point. There are various reasons why this can happen. However, changing your perspective a little can be all it takes to rekindle your love of Martial Arts and keep you training.

Losing your Martial Arts mojo has happened to most students at some point. Perhaps you’ve been training hard for months. You’re fit and you’re in great shape. But suddenly training becomes more of a task than a fun time.

How come, when you feeling at the top of your game, your feelings can suddenly change?

Sometimes the novelty of the sport wears off. Other times an injury or a bad experience forces you to have time away. And after recovering you feel unmotivated to start training again.

Many people, myself included, stop training after they’ve been on a holiday. In a matter of days, you undo your fitness – fitness that took you months of hard work to achieve. Alcohol, poor diet and inactivity of being on a break being the main culprits.

If you are a member any martial arts forum, club, group you’ll have seen this happen. And you’ll have heard this question before:

“I’ve lost my motivation to train what can I do?”

What can you do about it?

It might sound obvious but the best thing you can do is to carry on.

Firstly, remember that motivation is a fleeting feeling. Once you start to train again the feeling of being unmotivated often disappears. Simply starting to train again is the hardest part of this process.

Personally, once I’m at the gym and I’m training I don’t regret anything. Afterwards, I’m on a high and happy that I went. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve this has happened.

But sometimes it can be bad experiences that sap our energy for the sport. And from time to time a different approach is needed if you wish to solve them.

Learned Helplessness

Bad training sessions, losing fights, and terrible sparring sessions can kill your motivation, enthusiasm and energy.

If these negative things keep happening to you it’s easy to be convinced that you suck and you should be doing something else.

However, this type of behaviour actually has a name, and it’s called learned helplessness.

Learned helplessness is a psychological condition whereby an organism is forced to bear unpleasant stimuli that could actively avoid. The organism has repeated bad experiences and comes to think of them as unavoidable.

The organism has learned that it cannot control the situation. It feels it cannot control the bad experiences. But, in reality, the situations can be escaped.

Framing Your Problems

Framing your motivational problem differently can sometimes help if you’re having troubles like the above.

Sometimes it’s worth telling yourself that you don’t have to go training – it’s not a matter of life and death. You’ll still have water to drink if you don’t go training. You’ll still have food on your plate and a roof over your head if you don’t hit the gym.

Remember that you’re lucky enough to be able to choose to train. Because there are many who don’t have this choice.

When human beings feel they have a lack of choices it creates the feeling that their freedom is being constrained. Following this is a belief of helplessness leading to feelings of despair and a lack of motivation.

By contrast, when human feel they have choices, it creates feelings of empowerment. And sometimes this is all we need to pick ourselves back up and gives us the willpower to carry on.