I’d like to think that somebody putting a prize on the line for me to get in shape would motivate me to do it…
But in reality I know that it doesn’t actually change much, at least for most of us anyway.
Winning $10K sounds pretty good though right?
The amount of burgers I could eat, the holiday I could go on and the beers I could drink with that money.
It makes it damn appealing to sign up to one of these challenges.
The interesting thing though is even though the prize dangling in front of you seems like it should motivate you to work harder and see it through for the whole challenge, the turnover rate of people who start up the challenge and give up a few weeks in doesn’t really change at all.
So why does that happen?
People aren’t wired to be motivated by prizes.
In Carol Dweck’s book “Mindset” she presents research on children with a growth mindset who were given a task to do.
They were separated into 3 groups:
- Kids who were told they would receive a prize for doing the task
- Kids who were told they may receive a prize if they do the task
- Kids who were just asked to do the task with no offer of a prize
You would think the kids who were told a prize was guaranteed would have done the task most successfully, right?
Instead these kids had the lowest percentage of completion, followed by the kids who were told they may receive a prize and against what most people would assume the kids with the highest completion rates were those who were asked to do the task with no mention of prizes at all.
It became apparent that putting the idea of the prize in the heads of the children only manipulated their motivation negatively when it got hard. It made them believe that the task was too difficult and the prize wasn’t worth it.
The kids who were motivated by the potential of the prize thought that if they were to put the time and effort in to actually finish it could be for nothing if they didn’t get the prize.
Whereas the kids who were doing the task to challenge themselves took these setbacks as an opportunity to learn and grow.
Remember this is in kids too, and kids are generally easily motivated by gifts and prizes.
Ever offered a child a cookie to do something simple?
They run off ready to take on the world because cookies and sugar are delicious…
Let’s take this back to adults now. We have more complex thought processes, emotions, dealing with how things affect others perception of us.
Not to mention external stressors like careers, relationships, body image issues in particular in most of the people who these challenges get marketed too.
If kids aren’t even motivated to do hard tasks for a prize, what makes us have any chance of following through with it?
So why do these challenges exist in the first place then?
We know it doesn’t work for the masses of people who join them.
As fitness professionals the first goal should always be to help people, the second goal is to be able to make a living doing it.
But I strongly believe that the people promoting these challenges have it the other way around…
Now I’m not talking about the people inside the gyms running the challenges. I have a friend who owns an F45 and he would be one of the most genuine guys around wanting to help people.
This comes from the top of those chains, the guys sitting back in the offices trying to figure out how they can fill out gyms and open more franchises not trying to figure out how they can help more people.
The psychological principles behind these challenges is significantly closer to that of gambling and only marginally represents the principles behind behaviour change.
Everyone knows when they drop 20 bucks into a pokie machine they will more than likely lose it, but the potential to win is enough to motivate you to try. Same goes for these challenges but we all know that motivation doesn’t just last for the next 8 weeks once you drop money into it.
Daniel Pink in his book “Drive” identified lasting motivation to come down to three main factors; autonomy, mastery and purpose. These factors are the ones when you look at those who are successful in their endeavours nearly all express.
Autonomy or simply being involved in making decisions in the process is massively impactful on results. Think about when someone tells you to do something, generally the first thing that happens is you don’t want to do it. Or on the other hand, if someone tells you that you can’t eat ice cream all of a sudden all you want is ice cream no matter if you hadn’t eaten it in months beforehand.
We work better when we feel like we are being heard. When the relationship comes before the what… When we feel like we are making the decisions for ourselves even if we have a coach guiding us on what to do.
Mastery gives us something to work towards, when you find yourself getting closer and closer to your goals you often get more obsessed with mastering the little things. You hear the stories about the footballers who would stay back after practice to kick 100 shots at goal every session, even though they were already considered amongst the best.
We need to be able to see ourselves move the needle forward and to identify where else we can do the same.
The last piece of the puzzle is purpose. This is the one that I think can have the biggest impact on people without the others involvement. People who have a powerful purpose behind their goals are the ones who make it through these 10K fitness challenges without giving up.
Guess what? Their purpose isn’t winning the cash either…
It’s the guy who isn’t confident enough to ask that girl out in his office who he’s been in love with since they first met. The mother who unintentionally became an unhealthy role model for her kids and has decided to flick the switch.
The power behind these people’s purpose exceeds anything that life can throw at them and becomes the reason they get out of bed at 5am in the morning to get to the gym.
If you’ve made it this far and you can understand why that broken prize money fitness model isn’t what you need but you don’t know where to start, reach out to us at Newstrength and we will take you through a FREE consultation where we cover things that will actually help you reach your goals and keep your drive high.