How to Succeed with your 2024 Fitness Resolutions

Christmas ends, the New Year begins, and it doesn’t take long before I spot lots more people running along the pavements, stretching at zebra crossings and doing push-ups on park benches. Yes, those New Year resolutions are underway, but how long will they last? I’ve been a personal trainer and running coach since 2011, and I’ve conducted tens of thousands of sessions. Here are some of my top tips for setting your fitness resolutions.

SMART Targets

The SMART acronym is well-known but often forgotten. It’s a great way to remember how to set sensible targets. Of course, you don’t need to sit down with a pen and paper and write out your New Year resolution like a school child, nor does your target need to be a dissertation (in fact, simple is good), but remembering how to set SMART targets is helpful.

S – Specific

Try not to set vague targets like ‘I’m going to get fitter’. This isn’t going to help you focus your efforts, nor will it keep you accountable.

M – Measurable

If a target isn’t measurable, you have no way of knowing if you are succeeding or failing. ‘I’m going to accumulate 70,000 steps every week’ is a great, measurable target.

A – Achievable

In my opinion, this is very important. Most people fail to achieve their fitness goals because they are unrealistic, often because they have been set in an emotional state. For example, someone looks in the mirror after their Christmas indulgences and isn’t happy with what they see, in this unhappy state, they determine to run a marathon every day followed by a hundred sit-ups. This is unsustainable and leads to failure.

When I meet up with individuals who have enquired about my personal training services, I ask them how many times per week they want to train to reach their goals. I know that most people commit to too many sessions, so I always program less because I want to set people up to succeed, not to fail. You can add more training at any point, and it feels great, but if you take training out of a program, it feels like failure. I am also adamant that consistent good training trumps inconsistent great training. By this, I mean that you are better off training twice per week, every week, than trying to train four times per week, but rarely achieving this.

R – Relevant

This is fairly obvious. If you want to run a half marathon in 6 months, setting yourself the target of doing 100 sit-ups per day isn’t going to help; you need to run. In fitness, we call this the principle of specificity – i.e. you get better at something if you do it.

T – Time-Based

Having a deadline for your target helps to keep you on track, but it can also be a demotivation if you’re not making the progress you were hoping for. This links me to a footnote to SMART targets…

Outcome-Focussed vs Process-Focussed

Both types of targets have their strengths and weaknesses, and they are appropriate in different circumstances. For example, outcome-focused targets are important if you run a business and it is vitally important that you need to achieve something. The consequences of not achieving the target could be severe, like your business folding.

I don’t think fitness goals should be this stressful when we all have plenty of stress at work and sometimes at home. Subsequently, I prefer process-focused goals like ‘I’m going to run three times per week following a program set by a running coach, building towards running a marathon in 6 months.’

The outcome-focused equivalent of this goal would be ‘I will run a marathon in under 3 hours in 6 months.’ What happens if you run a marathon in 3 hours and 10 minutes? Is this a failure? Or you’re 1 month away from your marathon and it’s clear that 3 hours 30 minutes is a more sensible target. Do you stop training and throw a tantrum because you won’t achieve your target? I encourage people to focus on the processes because outcomes can be uncertain. If someone manages to train 3 times per week, to a good standard, almost every week for 6 months, they’ve done fantastically well and their marathon time will be what it will be, and they should be proud.

Summary

When I see people out exercising in January and my instincts are telling me that they’ve not done this for a long time, I’m delighted for them, and I hope they succeed. However, I know that many of them won’t because they’ve not set themselves sensible New Year resolutions. If you’re looking to get fit in 2024, take a moment to review your resolution. Make sure it’s SMART, and focus more on the process and less on the outcome.

Tom is a personal trainer in Exeter. He specialises in mobile and outdoor personal training, as well as running and athletics coaching.