New Year's Revolutions

We are kicking-off 2018 focused on everyone’s favorite January topic: New Year’s resolutions!

But… it’s not what you think ?

We know the term “New Year's resolutions” can have negative connotations to some people. If you’ve tried setting resolutions in the past, only to quit, you may be mentally setting yourself up for failure - even if you have the best intentions. Setting a resolution means you’re trying to resolve a problem, but you don’t have a problem which needs solving. What we want you to focus on instead is getting the wheels turning, start moving, and find new ways to improve. That’s why we want to encourage you to set a New Year’s Revolution.

There are many different types of “goals” you can set for yourself to form a New Year’s Revolution. Since we are passionate about helping you build your legacy through health and wellness, we’ve outlined a variety of fitness-specific goals for you to try and incorporate into 2018:

Qualitative fitness goals

One way to create a fitness goal is to identify something which serves your body, your health and your general wellness. These goals can take on contextual, comparative or superlative forms, which makes a little them more difficult to track or measure outside of how they make you feel. For many people, this is the ideal type of long-term goal to set and stay focused on. For example, you could:

• Form a new habit
• Motivate yourself
• Cultivate discipline

In an effort to keep a positive perspective on your goals, focus on forming a good habit, rather than trying to break a “bad” habit. One popular fitness habit many want to develop is moving the time of day when they workout, such as wanting to squeeze in some early morning exercise before taking the kids to school. If you are not already a morning person then this may not sound appealing, but implementing these tips will set yourself up for success:

1. Wake up even earlier. Start by waking up 10 minutes earlier than you normally do to get in a quick a 10-minute workout. Then, you can slowly push back your wake up time by 5 minutes every week until you’re waking up at your new goal time.
2. Pick out your workout gear. Lay out your clothes every night before bed. This will cut down your prep time (and ensure you're not too tired to realize you put your shirt on inside out by mistake).
3. Plan your workout ahead of time. Know exactly what your workout entails in advance so you’re not trying to look it up on the gym’s Wi-Fi, or fumbling around in the dark while trying to remember what it was you intended to do.
4. Have breakfast prepped. For a little extra satisfaction, have a delicious-and-nutritious breakfast waiting for you when you’re done or when you get home!

Some people find they don’t have trouble feeling motivated to get moving, but can’t seem to get themselves into a regular routine. While you don’t need to make exercise your number one priority every day, you could schedule your workouts in advance each week around other activities so you know when you’ll have dedicated time for yourself. For example, if you have an online calendar you could create a new category called “fitness” or “my health” and block out the time in advance.

Quantitative fitness goals

Some people are better at focusing on numbers rather than feelings. If you’re motivated by data, then setting a measurable goal would be a good place for you to start. A few types of quantitative fitness goals could include:

• Increase your endurance
• Increase your speed
• Build strength
• Add mass
• Complete a specific exercise ‘X’ amount of times

Many of Legacy Life Fitness’ clients say they want to be able to perform some number of push-ups or pull-ups without any assistance, or run one mile without stopping. Even though training to be able to complete a specific exercise puts your focus on one movement, you will find you’ll improve in other areas as well, such as more upper body strength for push-ups, better core (and grip!) strength for pull-ups, or even increased endurance while running.

My personal fitness goals for 2018

In the past, I’ve always set a resolution, like to be less judgmental or to drop 10% body fat. The first is something I feel I should be doing all the time, so I never made it a priority or had any real way to measure if I was improving or not. The latter I always put on the back burner, thinking to myself I would have plenty of time to achieve my resolution. Needless to say I’m still working on both.

But this year I decided to take a different approach and made my first New Year’s revolution: I created a fitness goal for myself to lift 5,000,000 total pounds by the end of the year. This gives me the opportunity to focus on my favorite form of activity: heavy lifting! By aiming for a specific amount of volume, I will in-turn be building strength and muscle. It also allows me to create a concrete plan of action to achieve my goal. I know the average amount of weight I need to push every week in order to stay on track which will help me stay focused on my goal. And, as I continue to track my total volume, I will see how my daily effort is adding up, which will help me stay motivated throughout the entire year. It’s a revolutionary way to achieve my New Year’s goal. There’s an old (and cliche) saying, “If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” but this is exactly why I choose to scrap the New Year’s resolution and jump on board with a New Year’s REVOLUTION!

Plus, I know I’ll need to fuel my body appropriately in order to have the energy to train hard every day, so I know my nutrition will naturally fall in line as well. It’s a win-win scenario. I know I will still be training as hard as I ever have in order to achieve my revolution goal, plus I might just reach that pesky body fat percentage which has always eluded me.

What will your New Year’s revolution be?

We’re not even halfway through January yet so there’s plenty of time to create and implement your Revolution for the year. If you’re going to try something different, make it concrete; make a plan of action, write it out, track it daily, implement it… and succeed!

Just remember to take it one day, one choice, and one moment at a time. And if you’d like a little help in setting your goal, you can contact, direct message or call me to help achieve your New Year’s revolution and create your legacy in 2018!