Your New Year’s Resolution – It’s not too late! – Part 1

If you are like me, you probably had New Year’s resolutions that included a new exercise routine and better nutritional habits. I for one wanted to be a brand-new person starting January 1st!

Unfortunately it’s not an overnight miracle. It is good to have goals for the new year, but just like any other goals they need to be broken down into smaller intermediate steps.

So let’s say your goal is to do resistance training three times a week and cardiovascular training five times a week. The first thing to work on is frequency. You can simple start at one workout each (weights and cardio) a week. And let’s also say each workout is 20 minutes in length. That’s progress, isn’t it? You will do this for the first two weeks. Then you step it up and add another workout of each type. And so on…

After two months you have reached your goals of three resistance training sessions and five cardio sessions a week. You have gotten fitter already and probably increased the intensity of the workouts as you progressed.

Now you apply a similar principle to the duration of each workout for the next two months, slowly increasing each training session until you reach a maximum of 60 minutes per session. I do not recommend going over one hour for each session, but also think that 45 minutes for weights and 30 minutes for cardio is a good medium for anyone interested in increasing their fitness level and / or wanting to lose weight.

If you take this approach the chances of reaching your goals are much better, plus your body will appreciate it too. It’s better to ease into this exercise regime than shocking your body and beginning it overnight. This would be a lot more painful and difficult for your body to keep up, which is probably the main reason the gyms clear out again by March!

So it is not too late! You can start anytime and don’t even need to wait for a Monday. Today is Wednesday and it is still very possible to fit the first two workouts in. Let me know how it goes!

In my next article you’ll learn how to break down your diet goals.

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