Fitness and the New Years Resolution
by Director of Fitness Ted Bonham
New Year’s resolutions are a way to start the year on the right foot, or you may say, it’s a mulligan for the previous year’s resolution that didn’t quite reach your goal.
I am not a big believer in New Year’s resolutions because I believe they set you up for failure. When you fail a goal that you set, numerous things happen such as stress, depression, over eating, wanting to listen to Barbara Streisand or Cher music.
The same is true for fitness goals. For example, a person wants to lose weight and they decide on a number. Let’s say they want to weigh 180 lbs. To me, they are setting themselves up for failure. Although they reach that weight, what happens when they don’t maintain it. You got it, Cher music. Remember the Adkins diet? It got you to your weight goal, however, it didn’t do the daily maintenance to keep you there. Instead of setting a goal of 180 lbs., I would rather a person set a weight goal of 175 lbs. to 185 lbs. By doing this they give themselves the flexibility to maintain their weight. When you get to 175 lbs. you know you have to dial back the workouts a bit. The opposite is true for the other end. When you get to 185 lbs. you know you have to kick it up a notch.
Obviously I do like New Year’s resolutions that include fitness because you have to come see me. However, I don’t like most of the goals because they are unattainable. Goals like running a marathon in March when you haven’t run one before or your last run was in warm weather back in October are unrealistic. (can you hear Barbara’s vocal pipes warming up ?)
Here are some real goals set by some of my clients. “I want to run the Hawaii Marathon in December”. Great goal because we have a lot of time get into shape mentally and physically. Another is to get back into a daily fitness program. I like this one because all the person has to do is make an appointment to see me. All they have to do is walk through the door. I take care of the rest. This is the best one yet, I want to be more mobile in my hips and shoulders so my golf instructor can get me into the swing position he wants me to be in. I work closely with all of our instructors and we discuss their students’ limitations. Then I put together a fitness workout to fix the fault. Dave McCain and I are working on increasing one of his tennis students first step quickness. These are all real attainable goals.
New Year’s resolution goals can be fun and some what entertaining but remember if you start to hear Streisand or Cher songs in your head rethink your goals and then come see me.
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