You’ve got goals. You’ve got the program to get them, and you’ve found the gym to do it in.

Awesome.

Or at least, it is for the first few weeks or so.

But, once you get into the routine of actually training, it doesn’t always stay that way. That initial burst of enthusiasm is often tempered once you’re in the thick of it. Heck, that’s a big part of the reason why most people don’t stick it out for more than three months at the gym.

So, how do you go the distance? How do you avoid that three-month hurdle and keep your training up for years, or even decades.

It’s about finding the right ways to motivate yourself.

This, of course, is a very individual thing. But, in my experience, at least, there are a couple of common strategies that will work, and a couple of common pitfalls to avoid. In fact, you can check out a few of them below.  

Protect your gym time

Saying that you’ll go to the gym three or four times a week is one thing. Actually doing it is another thing entirely.

As soon as you start going to the gym, you’ll acutely notice that life has a way of trying to sabotage you getting there. Friends will suggest meeting up for drinks during your training times. Work and family commitments will start encroaching into the hours you’ve put aside for your training.

And, it’s easy to let these things get in the way. You think to yourself, “one missed session isn’t going to affect my motivation or my results in the long run. What could it hurt?”

But the truth is, once you’ve let one session slip, it’s easier to let others go as well. Before you know it, one session has become five sessions, you’ve not been to the gym in two weeks and your SMART goal is getting further and further away.

So how do you get around this?

Well, it’s important that you set your boundaries and protect your gym time as much as possible. Let your nearest and dearest know that you’re training, why you’re doing it, and when you’re doing it. Explain to them how important it is for you to complete those sessions, and that where possible, you want to avoid scheduling anything in that time. Once they understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, they’ll respect your need for the space to do it in.

Unfortunately, there will be times when you can’t get out of a commitment that clashes with your gym time. When you’re faced with those situations, though, make sure you reschedule your gym session as soon as possible. Then, put that rescheduled session on the calendar and commit to it. That way, you avoid the risk of missed sessions and the slippery slope that they lead to.

Remember your goals

I’m not going to lie to you. There are days when going to the gym is hard.

Say I’ve been up all night because one of my kids has a fever. The prospect of an hour of squats, bench and deadlifts doesn’t exactly appeal to me. I’d much rather be in bed, drinking coffee, or in bed drinking coffee.

It’s in these moments that it’s important to remember your goals. In the milieu of day-to-day life, it’s easy to lose sight of why we’re training. But, those goals are what brought you to the gym in the first place, and having a clear vision of them will keep you coming back.

Of course, there’s the question of how you keep those goals visible.

Sometimes, it’s as simple as writing them down in your training journal (more on that in a sec). I have a couple of sentences at the beginning of mine that remind me of why I’m there. They’re great to look at if I’m having a bad session, or debating whether I should make it into the gym that day.

If you’re a more creative sort, and you’ve got some free wall space, then making a motivation montage is also a great idea. Collect photos, quotes and illustrations that remind you of your goal and assemble them as a collage in an easy to view space in your home. Being faced with those visuals on a day-to-day basis is a great way of keeping your fitness aspirations in your mind all the time. It’ll pump you up and get you out of the house.

Keep a training journal

Last, but by no means least, keep a journal of your training so that you can track your progress.

In part, the reason for this is practical. When you’re training three or four times a week, you don’t always remember what exercises you did last session, how many reps you did, or what reps you were working at. Keeping a training journal means you won’t be stood gormlessly by the bar, trying to recall whether it’s 50 or 55kg you should be putting on there.

But, the training journal isn’t just a memory aid. It’s also a testament to your progress. You can look back through it and see how far you’ve progressed. Often, the results will surprise you. Knowing that your weights have gone up 30kg in a month, for example, is incredibly motivating, especially when you’re having a session where you doubt your abilities.

One last thing, I’d recommend keeping this journal on paper, rather than on your smartphone. Smart devices can be distracting in the gym, and you want to avoid the risk of checking social media or emails while charting your goals. Pen and paper might seem decidedly old-school these days, but if you want to have the right headspace in the gym, it’s a must.

You’ve got the program to get results and the motivation to do it. Do you need anything else? A gym buddy? Protein shakes? A personal trainer? In the next edition of this series, we’ll be asking just that…

Welcome back to Sticking with Fitness, the article series designed to help you realize your fitness ambitions.

Assuming you’ve read last week’s edition, you’re armed with your SMART and stretch goals and suitably motivated.

But, how do you turn that motivation into something more tangible?

That’s where finding a program comes in.

Finding the right program is crucial to realizing your goals. With so many programs out there, though, it’s sometimes hard to know where to start.

Fear not! Today, we’re running through three of the most widely practiced beginners’ fitness regimes. We’ll be talking about their advantages and disadvantages so that you can find the best one fort achieving your goals. 

Starting Strength

First released as a book by strength guru Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength is a staple of beginner’s strength training.

If weightlifting or powerlifting is of interest to you, then this program is a great place to start.

Starting Strength is a very simple program. There are two different workouts done three times a week, that look something like this:

Advantages

One of the most obvious advantages to Starting Strength is its simplicity. You only need to learn five lifts, the progression is straightforward, and three sessions a week is a manageable time commitment.

In Starting Strength, you start light, adding 5kg to the bar per session. Working this way, you won’t be exhausted after your first session, and you’ll see results quickly; both of which are major motivators.

Also, it’s a fairly balanced program in terms of major weightlifting movements. Squats, hinges and pushes and pulls are all accounted for.

Disadvantages

Because of the powerlifting slant, Starting Strength puts a lot of emphasis on lower body. If you’re looking to really build your chest, arms and back, then it has its limits.

It also introduces squats and deadlifts fairly quickly. These lifts, requiring good mobility and balance to achieve, can be difficult for newcomers. And, upping the weight before mastering these movements can limit progress.

Still, there are workarounds. Increasing the weight by 2.5kg, rather than 5kg a session, for example (which is what I did when using Starting Strength) gives you a bit of breathing room for mastering the lifts.

Ice Cream Fitness

Jason Blaha’s Ice Cream Fitness (ICF) 5X5 program feels, in many respects, like a response to Starting Strength. Where Rippetoe’s powerlifting program put an emphasis on the lower body, Ice Cream Fitness is designed to increase muscle gains in the upper body.

Like with Starting Strength, there are two workouts, three times a week.

Advantages

If Starting Strength was too light on upper body for you, then Ice Cream Fitness is very much the antidote. You won’t be short on chest, back and arm gains with this one. All the major movement categories are included, along with the focus on major compound lifts and linear progression. But, you also get plenty of supplementary exercises for your upper body.

Disadvantages

Ice Cream Fitness isn’t exactly a simple program, especially when compared to the straightforward Starting Strength.

Your workouts are going to take a lot longer. It’s 5×5, not 3×5 for a start. You’ve also got more exercises per session and a lot of new lifts to learn.

The complexity of the program and the time commitment required can put off some absolute beginners. And, if you’re serious about this one, recovery time is key. You’ll be eating and sleeping a lot to make it work.

 You’ve also got the same squats and deadlifts issue from Starting Strength, though, as with that program, increasing your weights by 2.5kg, rather than 5kg is an effective workaround until you’re confident with the lifts.

Nerd Fitness Bodyweight Circuit

Nerd Fitness has exploded in popularity in recent years. The website, which aims to “help nerds, misfits, and mutants lose weight, get strong and get healthy permanently” has attracted a huge following amongst many who wouldn’t normally consider a fitness regime.

Unlike the other regimes on this list, the Nerdfitness Beginner Bodyweight Circuit is designed to be performed outside of the gym. In fact, the only thing you’ll need is a kettle bell, though even this can be substituted for a gallon milk jug. The circuit looks something like this:

Advantages

The very obvious advantage to this one is its accessibility.

It’s short and incredibly simple; you can complete it in under 20 minutes. It doesn’t require any specialist equipment, you can do it pretty much anywhere and it costs you absolutely nothing to do.

As a result, it’s incredibly easy to stick to the Nerd Fitness Beginner Bodyweight Circuit, and it can be a hugely motivating place to start your exercise journey.

Disadvantages

Unfortunately, the simplicity that makes the Nerd Fitness Beginner Bodyweight Circuit so accessible is also its biggest downfall. On this program, you’re going to plateau very quickly. You can add more circuits, sure, but you’ll quickly stop seeing the benefits.

It’s perhaps unfair to be too hard on Nerd Fitness for this, though. The whole point of this program is that it’s an introduction to personal fitness, and a means of making fitness a habit. On those terms, it’s a success. 

You have your goals. You have your program. Now you need somewhere to train! In next week’s edition, we’ll take you through the process of finding the best gym to put your program into practice, and the pros and cons you’ll need to weigh up.

You’ve made a new year’s resolution to start a fitness regime. Congratulations! That’s an amazing first step.

Unfortunately, I’ve got some bad news for you.

You’re probably not going to keep this up.

“Well that’s negative! What kind of a ‘new year, new you’ article is this,” I hear you ask?

Sorry friend, but it’s the truth.

Statistically, 90% of people quit the gym within three months of joining. Those numbers don’t lie, and if I was a betting man, I’m afraid to say I’d be betting against you.

But why is that? Why don’t the many people keep up a fitness regime? And what is the 10% that stays the course doing differently?

That’s what I’m going to try and answer over this series. In these eight editions, I’ll be offering up a comprehensive guide, not just for starting, but also for sticking to a fitness regime in 2019. We’ll talk about the things that you need to get right, as well as the common pitfalls that you need to avoid in order to go the distance.

In today’s edition, we’re getting to grips with what I call the big question:

What Do You Want?

As far as I’m concerned, this question is big hurdle number one. Because, while “what do you want?” seems like a fairly straightforward thing to ask, answering it honestly requires a degree of soul searching that not everybody is comfortable with.

On the Importance of Goals

I’ve met plenty of people who start their fitness regime with – on the surface at least – a pretty laissez-faire attitude to the whole thing. Chances are, you’ve probably heard any one of the following from a prospective gym goer at one time or another:

“Oh, y’know, there’s nothing wrong with staying fit.”

“I figured I could maybe lose a couple of pounds.”

“I just wanted to feel, sort of, healthier, I guess.”

The instant you hear somebody giving you one of those lines, you know they’re in the 90% category straight away.

Why? Because they don’t have any concrete goals. Or, if they do, they’re not confident enough in those goals to articulate them.

As Zig Ziglar once put it, “if you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” And, by not setting yourself clear goals, you’re not really aiming at anything.

The result is that your fitness regime ends up not being a regime at all. Instead, it’s a series of loosely connected, ever changing exercises that may, or may not take you towards your goal. It’s unfocused, intangible, and ultimately unsustainable.

It’s very hard to keep yourself motivated without a goal in mind. A lack of motivation leads to procrastination, and procrastination eventually results in quitting. You get down on exercise for a while, before ultimately repeating the process the same time next year.

So how do you go about setting goals that you’ll actually see to completion? You start by thinking big.

Find Your Stretch Goal

Remember that soul-searching thing I talked about earlier? This is where that comes in. Now’s the time where you need to ask yourself what you really want.

Does it sound ridiculous? Does the very idea of trying to achieve it intimidate you beyond belief? It doesn’t matter. Say it out loud right now, and then write it down. Committing it to paper is a useful mental tool – it makes it seem more concrete somehow.

If you’re struggling to think big, then here are some utterly ridiculous sounding stretch goals to get your imagination going:

“I want to run the TCS New York City Marathon in under three hours”

“I want to stop looking like Peter Griffin and start looking like Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson.”

“I want to be stronger than Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Batman combined.”

What you’ve got now is an aim. More than that, actually, you’ve got a dream. And a dream is much more inspiring than an, “I just wanted to feel, sort of, healthier, I guess.”

So how do you go about turning that dream into a reality?

Turn stretch into SMART

Stretch goals have their limits. They are incredibly motivating, but they’re also kind of nebulous. You can dream about being stronger than Batman all day. But how do you actually go about doing it?

This is where setting SMART goals comes in. As LifeHack notes, SMART goals are those that are Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic and completed within a specified Timeline:

• Specific – target a specific area for improvement.
• Measurable – quantify, or at least suggest, an indicator of progress.
• Assignable – specify who will do it.
• Realistic – state what results can realistically be achieved given available resources.
• Timeline – specify when the result can be achieved.

Let’s say our stretch goal was to “stop looking like Peter Griffin and start looking like Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson.” There are many steps we need to take in order to make that goal attainable. So we need to work out what the first step is.

“Lose weight” is the obvious answer, but losing weight is a pretty vague idea (see the above, “I figured I could maybe lose a couple of pounds.”).

Your first SMART goal, then, might be to go to the gym three times a week and lose 6lbs/3kg in a month. You’ve targeted a specific area for improvement (weight loss), a measurable indicator of progress (going to the gym three times a week), you’ve assigned the goal (to yourself, obviously), stated a realistic aim, rather than a vague target (losing 6lbs/3kg), and you’ve given yourself a reasonable timeframe in which to do it (one month).

Armed with your SMART goal, you’ve got the best chance of achieving your goal. But, one big question remains. Once you get to the gym, what exactly should you be doing there to reach it?

Fear not! That’s where next week’s edition comes in. in “Get With the Program,” we’ll be running through the most popular beginner’s fitness programs out there, what they offer, and which one is right for achieving your SMART and stretch goals.

Having clear goals is vital to making a success out of your fitness regime.