5 Tips for New Year’s Fitness

 It’s that time of year again and many people are attempting to get on the fitness bandwagon.  Honestly, I’ve never truly understood the whole fitness resolution thing.  Maybe it’s guilt from all the parties, lack of activity or just plain old weight gain from the last month to month and a half.  The purpose of this article is to get you thinking about fitness as more of a permanent change.  Otherwise, the gains you’ve made, if any, will all go away once you stop and you’ll end up more disheveled.  To get you going, here are my 5 steps to New Year’s success:

The Big 5

1.  Start Gradual – This doesn’t mean only going once or twice a month, but it definitely doesn’t mean training every day.  This will inevitably lead to burnout and progress probably won’t come as quickly as you might think.  I know, I know, you’ve been watching The Biggest Loser on TV.  My feeling is those people are put into an abnormal situation and a large percentage will probably go back to where they started before or worse.  I still can’t believe they haven’t had a contestant hospitalized with some of the methods they use (the hate mail begins).

2.  Cover All Your Bases – Along those same lines, you must address every area of importance as it relates to your health and fitness goal(s).  This means addressing your weight training needs, cardiovascular (ESD) training and nutrition.  Many people that have made exercising a habit have only part of this equation.  This is the big reason why they’ve stagnated.  Get started with the right formula and you’ll be better off.

3.  Get Support – Not everyone can achieve his/her goals without having a good support structure.  This means having a supportive spouse, friend, colleague, etc. to help you along the way.  By the way, this doesn’t necessarily mean they give you advice on what to do – leave that to the Professionals.

4.  Be Consistent – Without doing anything with some kind of consistency, you’ll only get so far.  This is absolutely true with fitness.  We call it the SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands) principle.  If you don’t weight train regularly, for example, your body has no excuse to keep what you’ve worked so hard to produce. 

5.  Get Help – This could be hiring a Personal Trainer, going to group fitness classes, bootcamps etc.  Having a professional to help you along the way has been shown to produce faster results and improve compliance.  Some research has shown a 30% increase in effort just by hiring a Coach – typically means faster results.  By the way, this was just having someone there to supervise the workout and not actually coach.  Imagine the type of progress with someone who coached you up and had great program design skills.

Conclusion

I hope this helps you get started on the right track to better health and performance.  Most New Year’s Resolution people quite shortly after starting and I don’t want that to be you.  Make fitness a permanent lifestyle change and you’ll continue to see the rewards. 

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