The New Year is here and many of us have our New Year’s resolutions set. More often than not, these resolutions include getting fit. While we commend those who are looking to amp up their fitness in 2020, many people don’t know where to start or how to stay motivated, causing them to abandon their resolutions. At Project Swole, we want to help you reach your fitness goals.
Follow these 5 tips to set yourself up for success with your fitness resolutions!
1. Know Your Goals
Are you looking to tone up, gain muscle or run faster?
Create a list of your fitness goals and check-in with yourself to see if you are on the right track. Sometimes we set goals for ourselves that aren’t realistic, which is why it is important to check in to ensure that you aren’t setting yourself up for failure.
Starting your new workout routine with set goals will give you a chance to revisit and reset your initial goals if necessary.
Tip: Start off with creating smaller goals that will let you celebrate the small victories- which will add fuel to your fire to crush the rest of your goals.
2. Be Realistic
Set yourself up for success
Knowing what does and doesn’t work for you is key to crushing your workout goals. If you work better in a class setting, look up your local gym’s class schedule. If you aren’t a runner and want to run a marathon, start off slow and add on the miles as you progress.
Relating this step back to step 1, creating smaller goals that are realistic in reaching will help you to feel that you are making more progress versus starting off wanting to reach one major goal. Knowing at the start of your new workout regimen that you likely won’t go from the couch to running a marathon in a month will help put into perspective what your overall goals are and how long they will take you to reach.
As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is reaching your fitness goals!
3. Create a Plan
Avoid the dreaded workout burnout
Creating a routine and sticking to it will set you up to be successful in the long run. Starting a new workout routine can be difficult at first but once it becomes a habit, you won’t think twice about that six a.m. spin class. Without a routine, it will be much harder to reach your fitness goals.
Having a plan will also help to prevent you from having workout burnout. Plan out how many days a week you would like to be active and add in rest days so that you can recharge and give your muscles time to recover. It is also important to note that adding rest days into your workout schedule can reduce the chances of overuse injuries that may cause you to put a pause on your workouts.
4. Don’t Get Discouraged
You got this!
Many people avoid looking at the scale. However, utilizing a body composition scan at the start of your new fitness program can give you insight into where the changes in your lean muscle mass content have increased after adding strength training to your exercise regimen.
Contrary to popular belief, body composition testing tells you much more than just your body fat percentage; it analyzes what your body is composed of such as skeletal muscle, body fat, water percentage and it can even tell you how many calories you burn while at rest.
Often people get discouraged when they aren’t seeing results as quickly as they like. Knowing your body composition can help put into perspective what state you are starting in and where you are now while also giving you valuable information that can help you design a workout program that is most beneficial to helping you reach your fitness goals.
5. Fuel Your Fire
Amp up your H2O intake
Making sure that you are staying hydrated and fueling your body with nutrients is key to reaching your goals.
We’ve all heard that we need to eat our vegetables but the food that we put into our bodies can make all of the difference in reaching your fitness goals. By fueling up with nutrients, you can rev up your metabolism which will help you burn more fat during your workouts.
Besides helping you burn more fat, a healthy diet will also help you crush it in the gym. It may seem counterintuitive, but you actually need to up your calorie intake when working out. Your body needs fuel to burn to run that extra mile or do that extra rep.
Drinking adequate amounts of water will also help you in the gym by reducing muscle fatigue. Not only is proper hydration important for muscle recovery, but it also aids in injury prevention.
As you plan out your New Year’s resolutions for 2020, keep these five tips in mind to set yourself up for success when working to reach your fitness goals!
Tags: exercise, fitness goals
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