When I first started working out, I wasn’t thinking about calories or aesthetics or even long-term health. What hooked me was something much simpler: I wanted to be able to do things.
I remember standing under a pull-up bar, completely unable to get my chin over it. I would jump up, lower myself slowly, hang for a few seconds longer than the day before. I wasn’t chasing exhaustion. I was chasing that first clean rep.
The same thing happened with pistol squats. At first, I would fall backward or collapse at the bottom. But every attempt taught me something. My balance improved. My control improved. And eventually, what felt impossible became automatic.
Looking back, I realize I was building something that sport psychologists now describe as a cornerstone of long-term motivation: mastery.
At the time, I didn’t have language for it. I just knew that I was far more excited about unlocking a skill than I was about “getting a good workout.”
From Pull-Ups to Jiu-Jitsu: The Pattern Was Always There
As my training evolved, the pattern repeated itself.
When I became obsessed with handstands, it wasn’t because they burned a lot of calories. It was because they required precision, alignment, and patience. I could measure progress in seconds and inches. The smallest improvements felt meaningful.
Boxing was the same. Learning combinations, improving timing, feeling my coordination sharpen over weeks instead of days.
More recently, jiu-jitsu has become the most powerful example of this pattern. When I narrowed my focus to specific techniques—like refining my triangle choke—my motivation skyrocketed. Even if I was tired or stressed, I still wanted to train because I wanted to improve that one thing.
That’s the difference between exercising and training.
Exercise can be random. Training has direction.
And direction changes everything.
Why Mastery Fuels Motivation
In psychology, there’s a well-established framework called Self-Determination Theory, which proposes that humans are most motivated when three basic needs are met: autonomy, relatedness, and competence. Competence—the feeling that you are getting better at something—is incredibly powerful.
We are wired to seek growth. Not just effort, but improvement.
When you structure your fitness around mastery, you create a loop: you practice, you get feedback, you adjust, you improve (even slightly), and that improvement fuels your desire to keep going. Your brain rewards progress. Small gains matter because they signal that your effort is leading somewhere.
Without that loop, workouts can start to feel empty. You show up, sweat, leave, repeat. There’s no narrative. No arc. No sense of building toward something.
This is one of the biggest reasons people quit. They rely on intensity or novelty to stay engaged. They try new classes, new programs, new challenges. But novelty fades. Exhaustion accumulates. And if there isn’t a skill anchoring the process, motivation becomes fragile.
When you’re training for your first pull-up, it doesn’t matter if you “feel like it” that day. You want to see if you can hang longer. You want to test if you’re closer. The goal pulls you forward.
For me, that curiosity about improvement carried me through phases when pure discipline might not have been enough.
How to Build Your Own Mastery Loop
The good news is that you don’t need to be an elite athlete to build this loop. You just need something specific to get better at.
It could be a pull-up. A handstand. A faster mile. Cleaner push-ups. A kettlebell skill. A grappling transition.
The key is narrowing your focus long enough to see measurable progress. Instead of changing your workout every week, commit to one skill for four to six weeks. Track it. Study it. Repeat it. Let yourself care about the details.
Mastery transforms fitness from something you force yourself to do into something you’re building.
It creates a storyline. There’s a past version of you, a present version, and a future version who can do things you can’t do yet.
That’s compelling.
For me, this has been the thread connecting every phase of my athletic life, from my first shaky pull-up attempts to refining technical details in jiu-jitsu. I didn’t stay consistent because I am unusually disciplined. I stayed consistent because I always had something just slightly out of reach.
And getting slightly better is one of the most motivating experiences there is.
If you’ve been struggling to stay consistent, it may not be because you lack motivation. It may be because you lack a target.
Choose something to master. Give it time. Let progress pull you forward.
That’s the loop.
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