New year, new you!...hopefully. Right? "I'm gonna get myself in shape this year!" This is one of the most, if not the most popular New Years Resolutions, and undoubtedly one of most failed resolutions year after year. Here, I give you five tips to consider when setting up your health and fitness resolution so you don't end up high in January and low when it comes to that beach wedding in Mexico in June.
1. DON'T TAKE THE ALL-IN OR ALL-OUT APPROACH
Before you start your new health and fitness regimen step back and look at how your life is structured, who you are as a person, how your current schedule can be altered, what your finances are, and what your relationships with family and friends look like. Then put your new plans to improve your health into the mix and look at how it will affect your life. If there are too many negatives that are attached to your good intent, then it is not going to be sustainable. Neglected family will let you know in a hurry and eventually your squeezed schedule will start causing you to miss workouts. Those of us who have been successful at adding a health and fitness practice to our lives do it with a realistic approach that is flexible. We may miss a few workouts in January, but we are still at it in April!
How many times have we seen the scenario where someone comes flying out of the gate in January, eating nothing but bodybuilder chicken and broccoli, showing everyone their pile of supplements that sits in the corner on their counter, going to the gym for two hours a day 4-5 days per week and posting #fitspo selfies on their social media pages? Then you see them in March or April and they have already quit and have excuses till Tuesday about why they aren't working out any more.
They are gone by March because their approach was completely unsustainable and out of character. Of course they weren't able to keep it up! Eating food you don't like is going to make you miserable. Going to the gym for ridiculous lengths of time is stupid and doesn't fit into the schedule of most adults. Buying copious amounts of supplements is expensive and unnecessary, and posting selfies showing everybody that you are in the gym is some sort of superficial effort to legitimize physical self worth that has nothing to do with long term health, function or longevity. What do you think we have in common here? All this shit is one big setup for failure! You are sacrificing so many other aspects of your life in order to do your gym thang that it ends up not being sustainable; family, finances, enjoyment to name a few. All for what? For a month or two where your friends are impressed because you have put on a front that this is how you live your life now? Not that it matters, but show your family and friends that you've sustained your new lifestyle for all of 2017, not just January/February, and they will be impressed.
2. MAKE YOUR RESOLUTION MEASURABLE AND FLEXIBLE
"I'm going to get in shape this year." "I want to lose my beer gut." Those are all well and good but, in my opinion, they are byproducts of achieving a measurable goal rather than the goal itself. They are subjective and narrow in focus and there is nothing in those statements that says how you are going to accomplish them. "I am going to do a 300-500 calorie workout, 15 days a month" is a better goal (or resolution) to make. When you make the measurable action the resolution, you can easily quantify whether or not you are attaining it. You either did the workouts or you didn't. That being said, if you miss a workout or even a week of workouts due to unforeseen circumstances it absolutely does not mean you have failed your new goal. You have made your resolution flexible by using a large enough measurement window, a month, so you can get right back on the horse and make up for missed workouts. Remember you're playing the long game here, folks. We're trying to win more weeks than we lose over the course of our entire lives. Accept small setbacks because they don't mean shit in the long run!
The cool thing about making real actionable items the resolution is that you don't have to worry about results. "Getting in shape" will take care of itself because it is a byproduct of you accomplishing your resolution. If you add 3 hours of physical activity a week to your life and keep everything else the same, your body will be forced to adapt to that input and you, for sure, won't look or feel the same 365 days later. Hell, if you add in three 7-minute workouts per week your body will change.
3. REVISIT YOUR GOALS MONTHLY, NOT YEARLY
If you are just getting started, ease into the change you are making in your life. Maybe your goal is 11 workouts in January, 12 in February, 13 in March and so on. At the end of each month you assess the pros and cons of the amount of time you allotted to your health and fitness progress and take them into account when setting your goal for the next month. If you allotted too much time to fitness and personal relationships are suffering because you aren't spending enough time with a spouse or your children, you have an opportunity to address that and make scheduling adjustments accordingly. Either move the timing of your workouts or scale back the amount of time so your life remains well rounded and nothing suffers.
Take that initial progress picture so you always have a reference of where you started and take one monthly along with a set of notes that allow you to compare where you're at currently in relation to where you started. The notes allow you to document setbacks and things that worked well for you in that month. Program a reminder in your electronic calendar and set some time aside to take your progress picture and document some notes. During this time you also set your new micro-goals for the upcoming month. Some examples of monthly goals may be to increase hip mobility, improve shoulder posture, or even to start growing a big ol' booty.
The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday. It is very motivating to see you look and feel completely different than the person you were six months ago and a before and after is a clear way to accomplish that. It's also a great reminder that temporary setbacks don't put you back to square one. You can still see that you are miles ahead of where you were initially when you have your initial starting picture and documentation to reference.
4. FIND ACCOUNTABILITY
Whether it's a workout partner, a trainer, a spouse or a friend, find someone who is going to support you and hold you accountable for what you say you are going to do. You are waaaaaay more likely to stick to your health and fitness practice if you have support! Even the professionals use others to hold them accountable. My whole life I have had various lifting partners that I'd give permission to call me a dick if I didn't make it to a session. Now, my wife and I workout together in order to provide accountability to one another. Professional fitness models have built in accountability in that they won't get any more magazine covers if they start missing workouts. Runners won't win any more races if they don't get their roadwork in. Athletes get kicked off the team if they show up out of shape.
You may not be trying to win races or land magazine covers, but the idea is essentially the same. Your workout partner will probably find another partner if you stop showing up for them. If you're someone with pride, the shame you feel from letting somebody other than yourself down makes it that much more real and gives it some color that goes beyond the self-shame you're able to privately hide the back of your mind.
Surround yourself with like-minded folks, sign up for future competitions that you need to prepare for, join classes or groups where you see familiar faces weekly or use a personal trainer. The more ways you can find accountability the better.
5. TAKE A HUMAN HEALTH, FUNCTION, AND LONGEVITY APPROACH
This is the foundation of The Goods Method, where we practice things that are correlated with a body and mind that work well in all situations, stay disease and injury free, and last forever. The vanity stuff is a beneficial byproduct. There is nothing wrong with liking the way you look. That being said, do not enter the New Year with a goal that is oriented at building a figure that you perceive to be appealing to others. That is an unhealthy mindset and fuck what they think! Build a body that can bring you where you want to go and do what you want to do. Functional bodies and minds are sexy as fuck IMO! When you aim for function, your physiology takes care of itself. After all, it's harder to get shit done when you are hauling around 40 lbs of excess weight.
Another part of the health, function, and longevity equation I want to touch on is to be smart about how you train. I've been in the game a long time and seen it all. Guys folded and crushed by squat bars, shoulders blown out by doing Olympic lifts while fatigued, people flying off the back of treadmills, backs blown out by one too many 500 lb dead lifts. It's one thing to injure your self playing a sport or doing a challenging hiking expedition, but there is no reason to injure yourself in the gym, especially if you are just a regular guy or gal looking to improve your health.
Modern human beings and have evolved over 200,000 years (and ancestral origins over 6 million years) to move certain ways. We walk, we run, we jump, we throw, we pick shit up. You get the point, move like a damn human being! You are not a kangaroo that only hops without contra-lateral reciprocation (walking or running), you are not hoist that just lifts heavy things, you are not a monkey that just swings from things. Each of these essentially does one thing. We, as human beings, do a variety of things. I'm not saying don't do any of those movements, but know that overuse injuries will arise if you get caught up in doing one movement pattern too much. Unless you want to end up with a blown out back or bone spurs in your elbow, you need to follow a few rules when you are trying to achieve optimal human health, function and longevity.
One, proper biomechanics and technique always come before increasing load. Two, remember your gains come during proper recovery, so seek out information on recovery protocol. Three, listen to what your body is telling you. If it hurts in a bad way, stop doing what caused the pain. Four, being under large overhead loads when you are blacking out does not correlate with long-term health. Olympic lifts, to be done in the 1-5 rep range when fully recovered, are for nervous system development, not cardiovascular conditioning. If you're training for competition purposes and need to push your limits, do it in a safe manner where slight faults in your form don't end in catastrophic results. Five, your human body works in a variety of ways, so have variety in your training. You will achieve balance in your body and avoid monotony and physical injuries by incorporating a variety of movement patterns on a variety and combination of planes. The fastest way to derail a health and fitness plan is to injure yourself, so be smart about how you train and seek professional tutelage if you don't know what you are doing.
Whether you are just getting started for the first time or looking to aim for some new goals in 2017, I hope this helps! Good luck to everyone in the New Year!
Note: This article was written and edited with input from my wonderful wife, Coach Evelyn.
