3 Ways To Spring Back Into Your Fitness Goals
With Spring right around the corner it’s time to add fuel to your New Year’s fitness resolutions.
Every fitness journey is full of ups and downs, stalled progress, and moments of mental and physical fatigue. If you’re currently feeling yourself getting off track from your fitness goals due to time constraints, family, or life in general the first (and probably the best) thing to do is to not beat yourself up over it. The second-best thing you can do is quickly figure out a way to refuel your fire and once again start blazing a trail towards success.
Whenever I’m feeling like I’m in a slump or I’m experiencing stalled motivation I use one of these three tools below to help jump start my mojo, I hope one of these strategies will resonate with you and get you back on track right in time for Spring.
#1. Use An Accountability Mirror
This has been one of the most powerful tools for me by far and one that I incorporate into my daily routine regardless if I’m stuck in a fitness rut or not. However, in order for the accountability mirror to actually be effective you have to be willing to be brutally honest with yourself; after all, what good is it to hold yourself accountable in half truth?
The accountability mirror can be a very powerful tool.
You certainly don’t need to be cruel to yourself, but you must cut the through the excuses and the internal lies you may have been telling yourself in the past in order to yield actual results. To put this into effect, rethink your current fitness goal and break it down into daily actionable steps you can take to help you achieve it. Once you’ve got your daily goal write it on your bathroom mirror with a dry erase marker. Now every time you wake up your objective is to walk in front of that mirror, look yourself dead in the eye and state your daily goal out loud including why it’s important to you. Then, every night before you retire to bed your objective is to stand in front of that same mirror, look yourself dead in the eye and either praise yourself for hitting your goal for the day or explain to yourself that no excuse is viable for allowing yourself to fail and verbalizing an action plan to avoid failure the following day.
This may sound a little woo-woo for some, but if it’s good enough for your favorite basketball player to do on a daily basis then it’s worth a shot, right?
#2. Attach Your Goal To An Even Larger Commitment
Physique competitions, Tough Mudders, 5k runs-you know what each of these have in common?
The natural result of preparation for these events usually causes the contestants to get in the best shape of lives.
If you’re currently struggling to get back on track with your fitness goals it may be because your vision isn’t attached to a large enough commitment to kick your dedication into high gear. Studies have shown that we are more likely to achieve larger more unrealistic goals with bigger commitments than smaller more realistic goals- because we know the smaller goals are easier to obtain, in most cases we’ll subconsciously allow ourselves to procrastinate and postpone execution. While being the next first place winner at The Cross Fit games may not be a desire of yours, as they say,
“Aim for the stars, if you miss at least you’ll land on the moon.”
#3. Get Competitive With Your Friends
So maybe competing with a bunch of strangers in order to pull yourself out of your fitness slump isn’t your cup of tea, fair enough. But have you ever considered some good old friendly competition with your closest buddies?
Towards the middle of last November, I started running outside at 4:00 a.m. every morning as I had felt my body becoming too pampered with its warm and toasty indoor cardio sessions on the Stair master. When a friend of mine caught wind of my new endeavor he asked me if I’d be interested in doing a run challenge with him for the rest of the month. He told me that he’d like to make a friendly wager for bragging rights and see who could run 50 miles or more outside and even though I had never run more than 1.5 miles at a time my highly competitive self happily accepted his challenge.
What was the result?
Well, not only did I end up logging a total of 54 miles in 18 days and beating my friend by more than 20 miles, I also dramatically increased my endurance, and lost a little over 7.5 pounds.
There’s something about competition that tends to bring out the best of us and fortunately or unfortunately with most fitness goals the only person you’re competing with is yourself. If you have some close friends who are as passionate about living a healthy lifestyle as you are you might want to consider getting together and doing some mini challenges with one another to keep you on track to reaching your fitness goals.
Whatever reason you may have used to allow you to fall back from your fitness goals, just know that there’s no time like the present to spring back into action.
If you currently use one of these three strategies to rekindle the fire inside or you have other tactics that you incorporate in your daily life to keep you on track, I’d love to hear about it! Feel free to leave us a comment below or reach out to us on our social networks so we can have a community discussion and help one another live our best lives!