How to use groups for motivation.

My definition of a group.

My definition of a group in the context of motivation is “A network of people that you build around yourself to help you achieve your goals and objectives through sharing and giving.”

There are two kinds of groups – Virtual and physical.

Virtual groups are where you don’t physically see the people and may never meet them in real life. Typically these groups live in the social network space.

Physical groups are more typically groups of people that you meet and integrate into your network of relatives, friends or acquaintances. Social networking tools like WhatsApp can still play a great roll in facilitating communication between members of physical groups.

I use both types of groups as motivational tools all the time. Groups that work together to achieve similar goals can be fantastic for motivation and what is so good about it is that it works both ways. You get motivated and others motivate you.

Motivational tools that can be used for motivation in a group context.

Amongst the tools I use for motivation, Strava must rank as the highest. Strava provides a brilliant platform for athletes to improve their performance by measuring and improving it not only against their own performance, but also against a massive database of other athletes, both professional and recreational.

The day Strava started calling me, a fat overweight person who could barely walk without falling an athlete, was a turning point in how I saw myself. I became an athlete and I started competing, first  against myself and later against others.

Today I am very proud of my performance as an athlete. I am happy about what I have achieved in a very short period of time and I have new dreams that I wouldn’t have dreamt of less than a year ago.

Strava is a complete platform that can be used by runners, cyclists and swimmers to record and measure their progress and performance using either their smartphone or any device compatible with Strava. (Leave a comment below if you need advice or wait until I do a blog on this sometimes in the future).

Every person will find different things in Strava that they value. For me the fact that I can measure myself in segments that I repeatedly ride is one key area of improvement that drives me. For others it is the fact that they can see their total distance rode for a week, month or year or the total distance climbed over a certain period.

Strava also have challenges. For instance I have entered the 6000 kilometer challenge for 2018 with the other members of my little cycling group.

If you prefer you can keep your activities private, but if you elect to make it public others will start seeing your achievements and can either like our comment on it. I use this to motivate people and others use it to motivate me and perhaps sometimes you could use it for bragging if you’ve done something particular spectacular.

On their browser version their is a flyby option where you can see other people who cycled past you on a ride. It then allows you to follow and/or message them if they made their profile public. I have used this to connect with people who are now riding with me regularly in our group.

I also met people on rides in other cities and we are now connected and when I go there again I will meet up with them and ride together.

The Strava apps can be downloaded from the respective Android and iOS stores and you can read more about them at strava.com.

You can also see a link to my own Strava in the Blogroll under the link “Follow me on Strava”.

How to build you network (Group/s)

I use various means to build my network. As you can imagine I didn’t have much to say at the beginning of my weight loss and by implication cycling journey. In the beginning my approach would be to ask my son, wife or neighbour whether they would like to ride with me. I was lucky that both agreed to ride with me and both are still riding with me although my son sometimes have time constraints due to work pressure.

As other people started joining the group, they told people in their networks about it and asked them if they would join and in the process brought others on board. We can’t always all ride together and some are forced to ride in different smaller groups because they just can’t get their times of availability to synchronize. That is also fine because we now all follow each other on Strava and keep an eye on each other.

This is a physical group and was initially built entirely on the old fashioned method of talking to people and inviting them to ride with us. Later on I used Strava to meet up with people or I would meet somebody on a ride, start chatting, ask them if they are on Strava and then later find them on the flyby and connect with them and invite them to join us.

The safety aspect of groups

On top of the motivational aspect of groups, there is also a safety aspect. Apart from danger of muggings or attacks, it is good when you have somebody with you if something unexpected happens to you. You can fall, get a flat tire, become too tired to continue or worst case scenario develop a medical condition that requires assistance. Riding in groups is usually the best option and I recommend that people never ride alone if they can help it or otherwise use a means of live tracking so that somebody at home can see where you are and follow up if you stop moving or stay away too long. Leave a comment below if you want to know about live tracking as there are various solutions available, some paid services and some free services.

This topic is very wide to cover in a single blog and many people will be left with a lot of questions. If you let me know what your questions are, I will endeavour to blog about it as soon as I can and provide you with the best advice I can within my personal experience on the matter.