5 Tips to Make Your Fitness Goals Last in the New Year

Imagine this: It’s New Year’s, and you’ve just spent weeks planning your biggest resolution to date. It’s Day 1, and you head to the gym determined to finally accomplish your fitness goals. Fast forward to Day 30 and that determination has vanished — replaced with tears (...just us?) — and you add another year to the ever-growing bucket of unsuccessful New Year’s resolutions. 

We'd like to share some tips that have helped us accomplish our workout goals, and we hope they can help you too. 

Tips To Find Success On Your New Year's Resolutions

1. Create a Vision Board

Visualization is a skill used by some of the most accomplished people in the world. They see their own success long before anyone else, and by seeing what's possible, they tackle their goals with confidence. Vision boards are a stepping stone that can teach you to “see” what you can be, even if you aren’t able to visualize it yourself. By placing it in clear sight, you can start each day with a clear vision of your fitness goals which will transform your mindset, and give you confidence to achieve the un-seeable. 

Some examples of things you can add to your vision board include:

• Printouts of your workout calendar
• Pictures of your dream body
• Healthy meals you’d like to cook
• Reminders to drink water, eat healthy, or take care of your mental health
• Everything you need to make your next year your best year

2. Fall in Love with the Process, Not the Results

There was a quote I once heard that changed how I approached life, and hopefully, it resonates with you: “A great life is just the culmination of a lot of good days.” It sounds simple, but when I stopped focusing on life’s highlights, it became easier to find success in the present. The present is all you can control, so what can you do to make each day of your workout routine enjoyable? 

Here’s what that could look like in your life: 

• Flexible dieting: ‘Healthy’ eating doesn’t mean stuffing yourself with plain chicken, vegetables, and rice for every meal. As long as you meet your macronutrient needs, you can eat (almost) anything within reason and still meet your health goals. Calculate how many carbs, proteins, and fats you need in a day, then figure out how you can hit those numbers while mixing in foods that you enjoy eating. 
• Change your routine: There’s more than one way to workout, so if something isn’t to your liking, try something new. If regular cardio isn’t doing it for you, consider going on hikes, incorporating HIIT, or even jumping rope. Is a regular weightlifting routine too mundane? Cross fit adds a whole new dimension to lifting weights. Research how others are adding spice to their fitness goals, and take a page out of their book.
• Make it convenient: Cooking, eating, and exercise can be big-time commitments, and they may be ones that you aren’t willing to make. If that’s the case, then what can you do to make those tasks accessible? You’ll have to get creative, but it is possible. Some ways we do this include drinking calories instead of eating them, and buying home gym equipment for when we can’t go.

3. Don't Chase Perfection



When you’re starting new fitness goals, you have to learn to forgive yourself if you don’t get it right — even the most successful people in their field don’t get it right 100% of the time! It’s a hard ask to expect you to stay perfect for the entirety of your New Year's resolutions, so instead, we’ll talk about what you can do to prevent frequent slip-ups. 

• Don’t skip meals: Hunger pangs affect you in more ways than one. When you’re starving, it’s hard to think straight which can lead to rash decision-making, short-term judgments, and post-decision guilt. Instead of cutting out meals to meet your caloric targets, eat smaller meals spread out throughout the day. This will keep your metabolism running, and the hunger away.
• Don’t overwork yourself: You might find that you like working out more than you thought you would, or maybe you’re trying to reach your fitness goals faster. Whatever the case, that can all be short-lived if you work out TOO much. Overworking your body can lead to burnout, worse performance, and even injury. Listen to your body and rest when you need to — your progress isn’t going anywhere. If you have overworked yourself, we have a whole line of rehab tools designed to bounce you right back.

4. Build Momentum with Small Fitness Goals

Think back on the last time you played a game or sport — remember the confidence you felt when you scored a goal or got a point? Small wins might look inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but they do more than just add to the scoreboard. Every win is a small confidence boost and reassurance that you are capable of achieving your fitness goals. 

As you plan your resolutions, think about small checkpoints that you can include throughout your year-long journey. This can be every quarter, trimester, or even every month. By the end of the year, you can say that you achieved not 1, but up to 12 goals that you set for yourself. You can attach a small reward to each of your health goals for added motivation — after all, the journey is worth celebrating just as much as the destination.

5. Track Your Progress

Piggybacking off our last point, it’s important to track your progress so you know (1) you’re going in the right direction, and (2) if there are any changes you need to make. One of the best ways to track progress is through smart goal setting. The S.M.A.R.T. method of tracking goals:

• Specific: Making your goals specific will help you be hands-on and intentional — the more invested you are, the more likely you are to succeed.
• Measurable: Measure your goals by one of the following factors: time, repetitions, sets, weight gained/lost, etc.
• Achievable: Your goal can be big, but also not so big that you can’t fit it into a single year.
• Relevant: Is your goal relevant to who you want to become? Goals that align with your passions are more likely to pan out. 
• Time-Bound: Similar to what we said earlier, short goals are the way to go. Chasing after one long goal can be draining on your mind and body.

Let's make this the best New Year yet!

It doesn’t matter what’s happened in years past. This is a new year, and we have every tool you need to accomplish your fitness goals. We’re rooting for you to have your greatest year yet — you can do this!

What do you think?