It won’t be long until the calendar flips to January once again.
We all know what that means; it’s time to start thinking about your New Year’s resolutions.
If you’re like most people, you may have made some fitness resolutions in the past. Also, you’ve probably experienced various levels of success with these resolution with some years being better than others.
Even if some of your January plans haven’t gone as well as you may have liked, another new year means there is another new opportunity to reach your health and fitness goals.
You may not be completely sure of what you want to accomplish in the upcoming year, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to start thinking about it and putting the necessary pieces in place to set yourself up for success. Let’s look at some important items to keep in mind as you prepare to make this new year the year for you to reach all of your goals!
Specify Your Goals
Before we get started with more specific fitness resolutions, we need to discuss a universal component…goal specification!
Starting a brand-new fitness routine (or even making significant adjustments to an existing one) is a very common New Year’s resolution. Normally this involves some type of weight loss goal, in other cases it may involve a muscle-gaining goal, and other times the goal may be a bit more ambiguous ex. “I want to be more active”.
Regardless of what your fitness resolutions may be, it is important that you try to be as specific with it as possible. A goal to “gain 10 pounds of muscle” is easier to focus on and gauge progress towards than something like “I want to feel better”. If you can assign a number or some other type of measurable aspect to your goal, it will be even easier to keep sight of.
Sometime before you head out for some New Year’s Eve celebrating, confirm your goals for the upcoming year. Make sure that they are quantifiable (or are as close to be quantifiable as possible) and write them down in a place that will make it impossible for you to forget them.
Strength Gains
Specifying your fitness resolutions can also make training planning easier. For example, if you want to improve your strength on your core lifts (in this case, the squat, bench press, and deadlift), you may determine that it will be easier to make this progress with dedicated, home gym training. During the first few months of the year, the gym is crowded and there is always a fight for equipment.
Instead of settling for stalled progress (or having to participate in skirmishes for the squat rack!) picking up a power rack, bench, barbell, and weight plates for your home gym space can greatly accelerate your progress towards your New Year’s strength goals.
Fitness Focus
As much as you can appreciate a muscled and toned physique, maybe you have some other types of New Year’s goals in mind. Rather than focusing on pure strength, improving your overall fitness level may be what is most appealing to you.
As invigorating as it feels to be able to go participate in our favorite activities for long stretches of time, attaining the fitness and stamina levels to allow this is oftentimes not quite as fun. Endless sessions on the treadmill or elliptical machines aren’t always the most engaging experiences, especially at the beginning of January where you may have to wait an hour before you even get a chance to use one.
Thankfully, there has been a lot of innovation and progress in the field of fitness training over the last few years and there are a number of new, captivating methods to boost our fitness levels. High-intensity internal training workouts (also known as HIIT workouts) have exploded in popularity due to their addictive qualities and overall effectiveness.
Instead of slogging for hours on cardio machines, you can improve your fitness with just a few pieces of equipment and some familiar movements performed in an intense circuit. An example workout might include 20 seconds of work followed by 20 seconds of rest of kettlebell swings, dumbbell snatches, and plyo box step ups. Performing just 5 circuits of this sequence is enough to improve fitness levels in an extremely short amount of time!
Top Tips
Now that you’ve settled on your New Year’s fitness resolution, let’s cover some top tips to help you attain it:
- Don’t try to do it all at once: I know we mentioned different gym and fitness routines, but try to focus on one area at a time. It can be difficult enough to develop a single new personal habit; taking on multiple new lifestyle changes at once can be overwhelming and can result in you developing zeronew long-term habits.
- Prepare for others to have the same plans: It should come as no surprise that a lot of people have similar New Year’s goals to yours and are excited to start working on them. Because of this, the first few weeks of January are notorious for being the busiest time of the year at gyms across the world. Prepare to potentially be overwhelmed during this period if you haven’t opted for home gym training.
- Make it until March: Developing a new lifestyle habit can be difficult and the thought of maintaining it for the entire year, if not longer, can be especially harrowing. Instead of thinking about sticking it out for an entire year, just plan on “making it until March”. By focusing on a shorter-term target, you’ll be more likely to stay motivated and once March rolls around, you’ll be less likely to want to stop your momentum!
Plan to Succeed…and do Succeed in 2025!
You know the old saying “making goals is easy, achieving them is the hard part”? Well, I’m sorry that we complicated the easy part by encouraging you to do some deeper thinking about your New Year’s fitness resolutions.
As difficult as it may be to refine your objectives, we promise that by doing so, you’ll greatly increase your likelihood of meeting and even exceeding your goals.
Being specific about what you want and setting yourself up for success will put you on the path to success; all you need to do from there is put in the hard work…
You got this!
