How can you motivate your students? Part 1

When I first started exercising a couple of years ago, following a bout of ill-health, I could muster but 15 minutes’ half-hearted jogging on a treadmill while watching trash television before collapsing, coughing and spluttering, to the floor.

Until, that is, I had an idea. What I did next not only helped me conquer my natural phobia of physical activity, it also taught me a lesson about motivation – a secret that I believe can help unlock the potential of our most reluctant, difficult-to-reach pupils.

The only time I’d really enjoyed exercise was when, as a younger man, I went hiking or cycling in the Yorkshire Dales. This is because the exercise had been a by-product of enjoying the landscape. And so my first stab at a solution to my problem of motivation was to try simulate the great outdoors indoors, to stimulate me visually and kinaesthetically (that is to say, I wanted to watch something that gave me the sensation of movement, of being outdoors, rather than stare at a static image of a beautiful landscape).