The most common New Year Resolutions include quitting smoking and drinking, and getting fit. It’s that time of the year when we all realise the need to work off our holiday excesses. It’s the busiest time of the year for gym memberships and personal trainers, with new fitness devotees dedicated to their new fitness regime.
Then along comes January 17th (officially known as Ditch New Year’s Resolutions Day) and keeping those fitness resolutions suddenly gets a little harder. By mid-February, most of those who had resolved to get fit will have returned to their old ways. Here we describe seven ways to make sure your fitness resolutions are not discarded.
1. Make your resolution challenging, achievable, and definite
A resolution to ‘get fitter’ is too vague as a target to work toward. Make sure you have a definite goal, such as to run a marathon by the end of the year. Make sure your goal is achievable, but at the same time challenging.
2. Keep it small and often… and planned
Cut bigger goals into bite-sized chunks. So you want 2015 to be the year you complete 10,000 squats? That’s a huge target, but 200 squats a week is far more achievable; and thirty squats a day is a piece of cake (which, of course, you’re avoiding).
Start small, and plan to increase your fitness regime as you progress. If you could start by running a kilometre in the first week of January, make a plan of action to run a half kilometre further each week. By next Christmas you’ll be running a marathon.
3. Bring others on board
Let close friends and family in on your goals, and look to them for encouragement. Employ the services of a personal trainer to show you new techniques and keep you on track, introducing new exercises and methods of achieving your targets. This will help keep things fresh and stop your enthusiasm burning out through boredom.
4. Measure your progress and enjoy getting fit
If you’ve created minor milestones on the way to your ultimate goal, measuring your progress should be easy. Part of this measurement should be to re-evaluate your aims. Getting fit and staying that way should be fun otherwise it defeats your purpose of achieving y
our goals. If you don’t like running, try cycling or rowing: if you enjoy what you do, it makes things way easier.
5) Give yourself a pat-on-the-back
Having made a plan to achieve your personal target, and split that into smaller pieces, make sure you congratulate yourself when you achieve each milestone. The reward is up to you, but make sure it doesn’t interfere with your fitness regime. Treat yourself to a movie or a massage, for example.
Get to it and get fit!
Resolutions should be challenging but achievable. Create a schedule of milestones, and make sure you fit your new regime into your working day. If you don’t have time for a thirty minute workout every day, then why not try to find six slots of five minutes (you’ll be surprised at what can be achieved by such a regime).
If your target is achievable and measured then there is no reason for failure. Get encouragement and make sure you congratulate yourself along the way, and you’ll soon be fit in 2015.
