Sir Mo Farah opens up on how to motivate yourself in exercise

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Sir Mo Farah has spoken about how he motivated himself to persevere before achieving Olympic success. While the athlete always kept his eye on the ultimate prize of Olympic and World Championship titles, he initially focused on smaller goals that would eventually build up to top-level achievements.

Farah, who won the 5,000m and 10,000m Olympic gold medals in both the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics, explained: "I've motivated myself by being aware of what I want to achieve, setting myself a goal, and once I've achieved that goal, then the next goal, and keep on moving, but doing it as little and as often as I can.

"I've had little goals - for example, when I was younger it was being able to run for my club, then my county, and then you go can I run for England? And then Great Britain - that was always a target."

Even after the long-distance runner's 2012 success, he continued to stay motivated by setting himself new goals. He said: "I had to then set myself another new challenge - it wasn't about going 'Yeah, I did something incredible', it was more like 'Can I retain my title?'

"It's important for all of us to have goals, because if we don't have something to aim for, it's hard." Farah quit racing in 2017 before briefly returning in 2021 to work on marathon running.

He clinched a record six consecutive victories at the Great North Run from 2014 to 2019, then bowed out of competitive running for good in 2023. Now at 42, Farah has scaled back his training.

Where he once clocked up 120 miles a week in his athletic prime, he now mixes two or three weekly runs with gym sessions, padel, and football. Family life is presently at the forefront of his ambitions.

He and his wife Tania Nell have twin daughters Aisha and Amani, aged 12, and a son, Hussein, aged nine. Farah is also the stepfather to Nell's daughter Rhianna, nearly 20.

"My kids and my family are everything to me," he said. "I try every day to run with my kids, train with them, spend time with them, pick them up, take them to school. The biggest part for me is just making sure my kids are healthy and live a good life, as well as trying to teach them to enjoy things."

When quizzed about his children's potential to emulate his athletic success, Farah noted one child's growing interest in running but insisted: "Honestly, I don't want to push my kids - I want them to have a good, healthy lifestyle, and be fit and strong, so I just try and support them, whatever they want to do.

"One of them really is enjoying running more than the others, but I just try and support and be the parent, rather than the parent who won four Olympic medals and is pushing his kids to extremes. It's not about that. It's about them being kids and enjoying it, but also showing them what's possible."

Farah also aims to inspire Brits across the nation through a new Weetabix all-stars campaign. He is collaborating with Olympic gold medalist Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill, England women's football captain Leah Williamson, and TV presenter and Olympic wheelchair basketball medallist Ade Adepitan as part of this.

"It's just showing people that by being able to change just a little bit, how much impact that can have throughout a whole day," Farah continued.

"If you look after your body, if you eat right - a big part of it is being able to fuel well - then you can achieve all these things, like myself. I didn't achieve the career I've had overnight, it took me years as a young boy, before then becoming a World champion and an Olympic champion. You have to set yourself a goal and a target.

"If we look after ourselves, we can achieve more. The next goal for me is I would love to be able to give back to the nation, to the kids, and show what's possible through hard work, dedication, looking after your body and looking after yourself."

Of course, there's no better example of what hard work and dedication can achieve than Farah himself. In 2022, Farah revealed in a BBC documentary that he was brought to the UK illegally at just nine years old. He was forced to work as a domestic servant and given the name Mohamed Farah instead of his real name, Hussein Abdi Kahin.

He went on: "Obviously, it wasn't easy for me to come forward and talk about my story, because you're known as a runner and this guy who's won four Olympic medals. But we all have stories, and that was my story, and I'm so grateful for the support I got, and that people can often talk about it now - I think this issue is something that was happening, but there was nowhere to talk about it.

"This is about who I am. What motivated me to talk about it was seeing my kids and just being honest to them - looking them in the eye and saying when I was their age I went through this, and I've become this guy and I've done so much for my country and I was so proud to achieve all these great things, but that was my story.

"Really, the goal is to show people we can overcome so many things."