My thoughts on motivation.

[SwiftViper]

I think that there were many things that came into why I decided to stop lifting, and I think there's psychology behind it that we need to be aware of if we are to be succesful, I don't find much inspiration from mr olympia size bodybuilders, in fact watching those videos would make me less inspired, because it seems that they go through a lot of struggle to get where they want to be, I can just feel their pain getting to that stage, when I used to watch vids of ronnie coleman lift I actually lost inspiration, because it's so much work, and it's like they lift to the point where they don't enjoy it.

Chemically what it's down to is whether it's giving you a rush, for me I stopped getting that rush from lifting, and it became more like a chore, it starts as something that aids your life and then becomes something that you feel is more of a hindrance, like washing up, I hate that. The main thing is:

you have to enjoy it

So if you are doing more sets than you need to, I think subconsciously you will start to lose motivation, because subconsciously your mind thinks it's wasting it's time, if you are getting the most gains from less effort (like when someone first starts taking steroids) it becomes way more motivational, you enjoy it. My problem is that I've got near a natural limit, not sure what mine is exactly, but I wasn't growing much. I was also wasting a lot of time changing weights (when I could of just bought chains to drop the weight each set) so you get tired of it, it becomes not worth it.

I think this would be the case if you were overtraining, if you follow rich piana's advice to do an 8 hour arm workout, doing this too often would lead to loss of motivation, you are burning yourself out, only do it if your getting maximum gains, the 20:80 rule should be applied to bodybuilding unless you are going pro. You want to do as much work as is needed, you've got to be going into workouts getting that good feeling (dopamine), too much depletes this IMO.

On here we talk about working hard, I think we work too hard, when we need to be realistic about how much drive we have, I done too much and got burnt out, actually fell into depression from it, didn't enjoy it anymore.

If you minimize the time you spend in the gym, and blast through workouts fast, are getting maximum gains, you will be desperate to go back, if you're not and your putting too much effort in for little gains, you start to hate it, I know I did, workouts have to be efficient, for me that gives me drive, just being able to put in little effort for a lot of gains, at that point lifting will be enjoyable. I found Zyzz inspirational because he doesn't seem to be killing himself in the gym like mr olympia, he doesn't eat until he hates it like Jay Culter admits, he enjoys it, watching Olympia bodybuilders train, I think they are somewhat sick of it.

And yes we can continue to lift even without motivation, like a job, we might not want to do it but we have to, if this mindset is in the average lifter I think eventually he will pack it in, I developed this mindset, I wanted to test my willpower, but ultimately it burnt me out, because it wasn't fun anymore. We don't actually need motivation, but bodybuilding without the pleasure in it becomes a chore, you start to wonder why you even do it, like Rich Piana said he doesn't sit their talking to himself into going to the gym everyday, he loves it, it should come natural to you, and you shouldn't have to always be battling psychologically to pick up the weights.

The same goes for eating, if it's meals you really enjoy you will stuff your face and find you are gaining muscle, but if the food is not enjoyable, it becomes a chore and realistically we can't keep to it, we shouldn't have to have willpower to do this, it should be something that we can't stop eating, if it's a nice curry everyday, we don't talk ourselves into it, we just eat and we will continue to eat, your not battling anything psychologically, actually you can't help but eat it, and you will get bigger with ease, milkshakes for me are great, because I love it I can drink so much milk in a day without effort. This also applies to those who try to lose weight, if they starve themselves they won't enjoy it, so then will go back to binge eating, but if they find a food they enjoy that's healthy, they'll just eat that all the time, it will be effortless.