We know it’s a cliche, but there’s just something about the new year that makes a visit to your local Silver Lake gym and Personal Strength Training Studiomore attractive than ever. But nobody wants to start the year strong and then fade out before Valentine’s Day. Is there a way to not just make resolutions, but form good routines that can stay with you long term? Here’s our handy guide to taking on new habits in the new year.
Stick It Out For A Month
Don’t worry, we haven’t changed our minds about not requiring contracts. This tip is more of a contract with yourself. Research has shown that if you can consistently do something for several weeks, it starts to become automatic. Why choose thirty days? Most people schedule their lives for a month at a time. Also, thirty days isn’t an intimidating amount of time to commit to. You can do anything for thirty days.
Do Some Every Day
Making habits automatic requires that you condition your body and the automatic parts of your brain. The simplest way to do that is to do the task every day without fail. Your brain and body are designed to adapt to changes in your environment and workload, so choose which changes you want them to adapt to, and then perform your actions (like, say, going to the gym and working out) every day for thirty days. What if you misjudge your workload and push too far too fast? Check out the next point.
Start Small
You may have ambitions to do dozens of box jumps, fifty pull-ups, and so forth. That’s great. We’re here to help you reach those goals. We don’t, however, recommend that you try for them on your first day back to the gym in a while. Instead, if you want the habit to stick, choose a goal that seems so easy it’s laughable. Perhaps your goal is to come to the gym and do one pushup every day for thirty days. Odds are that most days you will do more than one pushup, but by consciously setting the bar low, you’re training your brain and body to think of the gym as a place where you succeed, and making the task so simple that you can’t fail.
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