Four Thoughts on Your New Year’s Fitness Aspirations
As a new year comes blooming into view, many of us turn our thoughts to fitness goals. Whether you are a resolution or goal setter or an eschewer of them, you may have thoughts on habits you’d like to start or improve, or you may have hopes to accomplish something meaningful that requires a certain fitness. Having navigated these waters myself and helped others with them for going on 15 years now, I have some thoughts on this. There are four things I’d recommend keeping in mind as you mull your fitness aspirations. Not all of them will apply to all situations, but take what you can from this.
Make an Event of it and Put It on the Calendar
For some of you, this is already embodied in your aspiration. You Mt Rainier climbers will have a deadline. You half and full marathoners have a race date. But for folks who just want to increase their activity overall, or just want to do more cycling or dancing, I recommend you craft an event that happens on a specific day in the coming year that will call on your fitness. If your aspiration doesn’t happen in events per se, can you create an event of your own? If your aspiration is to do strength training, what experience might call for the strength you’re building? Or, maybe you set some strength training milestones like being able to lift a certain amount or do a few pull ups by a specific date. To the extent that you can put an important date on the calendar that you are aiming for, you give your daily training purpose and accountability.
Identify Intermediate Stepping Stones
If your aspiration is somewhat grand, it will be important to have some milestones along the way to it that aren’t as grand. In many cases, this will be obvious. If you’re training for a first half marathon, do at least one 5K and one 10K along the way. For other activities, give some thought to what those stepping stones are and when you might reach them. This helps you see your progress, gain confidence and have incremental celebrations that stoke motivation.
Socialize It
As you are giving shape to your aspiration, the big event and incremental milestones, tell people close to you about them. This makes them more real and also gives you another point of accountability. Another bonus is that it helps you make your way to more people with similar aspirations. This is a proven route to getting better at something: hang out with people already doing it. Some fitness events are sociable by nature–a race event or group bike ride. Others you can make social–invite friends to visit your gym and show them your lifting progress. This is not dorky. Chances are very good you’ll inspire someone else.
Focus on Small and Consistent Actions
You’ve heard this before, right? Doing something for 5 minutes a day is better than doing it for an hour once a week. Keep this in mind when dialing in what it will take to make your new fitness practices sustainable. Start small and build the groove. Fully allow yourself a 10 minutes strength workout where you do just 1-2 exercises. Once you have done that for a couple of weeks, you can increase it to 15 minutes/3 exercises. I love James Clear’s illustration of the power of small changes with the analogy of an airplane flying from LA to NYC. A very small adjustment to the trajectory, like a couple of degrees means the plane ends up in DC.
Fitness aspirations come in all shapes, sizes and types. If you’re having a hard time fitting the above advice to your particular fitness goal, or just want a sounding board for your aspirations, let’s talk! I’d love to help you seize and use your fitness in new and meaningful ways in 2026.
