Mate-avation: The (Sometimes Brutal) Motivating Power of Honest Friendships

Ouch, that hurt.

There is nothing like having a friend call you out on your bu%4sh@t. But there is nothing so raw, so powerful, so motivating as the honesty of a friend.

Feeling unmotivated? Stop reading this and call your mates. I mean it. Stop reading this article and call a friend right now. They are bound to restore your energy.

Feeling more motivated than ever before? Totally out of character? Better call a friend, also. It may be you have gone into hyperdrive, firing off sparks everywhere, overachieving but getting nothing done. These are the times when we tell our closest friends, "Oh, I'm getting so much done! It's all going SO well", and they reply, "Are you? You haven't called me once."

We are far from perfect. We all know it deep down but it's hard to admit it when we spend a lot of our time striving for perfection. I've talked and written loads about the pointless pursuit of perfection, the cookie cutter approach towards fitness that I see so often in the industry, the absence of people that look like you and me.

Personally, I have struggled with training. I have been through physical and personal challenges that at times have required me to "dig deep" inside myself to find the motivation to do even the most basic of things. A few years ago I suffered a puncture to my lung that almost killed me. I cannot explain to you fully the bleakness of sitting against an exercise ball daily, finding the little energy to sit up, or raise my arms above my head. In those days, being a personal trainer seemed a long way off. But things got better, a little tiny bit at a time. The friends that believed in me during those hard times are the ones I hold close.

My own struggles have made me question my relationship with motivation. After all, no one springs out of bed every day and punches the air, do they? And sometimes when you are getting up and punching the air, you are distracting yourself from the real and intimate relationships with friends and family that are so important. They may not care about your almost-a-thigh-gap-thigh-gap, but they might like you to share the incredible news with them.

Yesterday, I was talking to a friend about Instagram and the fitness industry, and the hyper reality of seeing a constant stream of Nike-clad 20-something fitness "models" doing weights in slow-motion, or fast-motion, or on a live loop. Don't get me wrong, I'm the first person to champion results, especially where someone has put in the "werq". But the beauty people see in these men and women, doesn't compare to the beauty I see in people everyday, despite all the photoshopped efforts. Who are these people keeping up appearances to? Not to my friends. They would rib me for hours if I was that vain.

I knew when I started Fit & Fierce training, I wanted to claw back a bit of that unreality and put a bit of intimacy back into working out. And I knew that good training would start with the honest (and sometimes brutal) feedback of my friends.

Friends hold a mirror up to your face, and if like in my world they spare you any niceties, they say, "Yeah, cool story, Brah. Like I care about your thigh-gap. Where we eating?"

It's not to say we aren't supportive of each other looking good, it's just that we are more concerned with each other feeling good.

When I find myself flagging, I look at my friends and feel genuinely inspired, happy and strong because I am reminded of all the ugly mess that goes into our successes. We are all far from perfect, but with persistence and support we can make genuine changes in our lives.

It reminds me that we should stop living and training online, get down to Vicky Park and make training fun, human and full of belly-laughs.