‘Callous your mind’: can motivational speeches pump up your gym performance?

‘The premise is always: you’re the underdog. Nobody knows how much you’ve suffered. Nobody cares either. So now you need to dominate.’ Photograph: Milorad Kravic/Getty Images

Perhaps my father walked out on me, the speaker hypothesises, his voice thundering over crashing drums (the kind that accompany tense moments on reality TV shows).

Absent fathers are a common theme of motivational workout speeches, and so the narrator in my earbuds takes the form of Dad; sometimes Encouraging Dad, but more often Shouting Angrily from the Sidelines Dad.