5 Ways to kickstart your New Year’s Exercise resolution

You may have already devised your New Years resolution or you may be thinking about it – but the one most popular New Year’s resolution is to get fit and start exercising. Most people fall short at the beginning or do not keep to their resolutions. Here is our 5 top tips to starting your New Years exercise resolution.

New Year’s Exercise Resolution

1. Find and Choose an Exercise that you enjoy - 

There is a reason why this is the first point on the agenda – as it is the foundation to an exercise plan. You wouldn’t want to do something you didn’t enjoy so why have to put yourself through an exerciseregime you don’t enjoy? When you choose an exercise you enjoy, it won’t feel so much like hard work. Some people like walking or jogging, others prefer cycling, weight work, tennis, squash, table tennis, swimming or even team sports like football or hockey. Some people prefer to do the same thing every day, others prefer variety in their program.

It doesn’t matter what type of exercise you do, as long as you do it consistently and if that exercise is an activity that you enjoy you should not feel the exercise is a burden to do daily or whenever you work at it.

2. Work at your own pace -

The benefits of exercise come from following a consistent program and sticking to it. If you go to the gym and work so hard that you are excessively tired and sore the next day, it’s difficult to maintain that consistency – you should aim to work your body sufficiently so that you can recover within the night or next day in order to work just as hard or even harder next time you are at the gym.

You DO NOT have to train to the point of exhaustion to benefit from your workout. All that you need to do is enough that you feel it’s somewhat of a challenge, but not so much that you couldn’t do the same thing again tomorrow.

Working to the point that you feel like you have achieved something or feel happy about what you have done, not so much that you cannot walk.

3. Find and use an exercise partner - 

Most people are more likely to stick with a daily exercise plan when others are involved. It’s easier to skip an exercise session when the only one you’re accountable to is yourself. But, when you know your friend is counting on you to join them, there’s little chance you won’t go through with it. An exercise partner does not have to come in the format of a friend, many people use forums and blogs to document their training, they even use mobile applications to track and progress further.

4. Don’t let a bad day or week derail your schedule - 

Although exercise shouldn’t be torture, be prepared that it will be challenging at times, and you may struggle a little, especially at first. You cannot always get the weather for a jog or even predict how busy the gym will be or even if you are feeling a bit under the weather, but that’s fine. If you find yourself starting to break away from your exercise plan, just pick up where you left off, and keep trying. Don’t be too hard on yourself, everyone has days when they don’t feel like exercising, just keep going as best you can and if you can, try a bit harder the next time.

5. Set goals for your exercise program - 

One thing that contributes most to our feeling of motivation to exercise, is to set goals, and then striving to achieve the goals that you set. The process of setting goals and achieving them, not only gives you a meaningful path of progress, it helps to build your confidence and self esteem. As you begin to see that you can achieve your goals you may not have thought that was possible, but it is with consistent, disciplined effort.

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