NYE Fireworks in Sydney, Australia
New Years Resolutions
As we close in on Xmas, New Years Eve, and the accompanying New Years resolutions which will no doubt follow the holiday festivities and overindulgences, many of you are perhaps preparing for your New Years resolutions. While there’s nothing bad about making new years resolutions per se, I’ve never personally been a big fan of them – they’re made, they’re broken, and most people end up on a merry-go-round of constantly broken resolutions from one year to the next.
One Ingredient for Long-Term Success
One method which I’ve applied both personally and professionally which can have an enormous impact on sustaining long-term fitness and exercise habits is recording each and every exercise session, including sets, reps, and weights lifted (or the equivalent if performing cardio). While it sounds fairly painful and tiresome to record every detail in this manner, it does become more straight forward and second nature after some practice and the initial learning curve. This is something I’ve put into practice myself for no less than 6 years, which has helped contribute to my own ability to sustain a long-term training schedule (about 10 years and counting).
There are enormous benefits that come with tracking and recording each workout, including the ability to monitor how you’re progressing from session to session, long-term statistics (that most good fitness-based apps include – such as Fitness Point) to monitor yearly trends, dips and troughs in your workout patterns, and increased flexibility, preparation and exercise ‘programming’ capacity.
I strongly urge you fitness enthusiasts to download a good app and bring your smartphone with you to the gym. While you’ll often hear “the gym is no place for electronic devices” I find this to be a bit of a self-defeating and short-sighted attitude. Just be sure to place your device in a safe position or keep it in your pocket so that you can easily record each set without a dumbbell getting dropped on it, and put it in flight mode if you lack the discipline to ignore incoming calls – when you’re at the gym, you should be in the training mindset, and that means not stopping for a chat or conducting business calls. It’s not that hard, really. And it shows that you’re serious about training and that you’re working with a program.
The Mindset
Don’t be this guy.
This all takes a little bit of pre-planning, but that’s actually another benefit – by planning to take your phone with you, wearing appropriate shorts in which to store it, having your app ready to go and all of the exercises and program already ready-to-roll, you’re mentally preparing yourself to engages in a serious training session. No dicking around; get to the gym, follow your prepared program, get out. Done. Recorded. Filed. Statisticalised (that’s a word now).
Your Resolution
If you have to make one new years resolution for 2015, let it be this: “I resolve to engage in exercise habits that I can sustain, without injuring myself, and to record every detail so I can look back with pride in 2016!”
Need an app? Sure you do, that’s why you’re still reading – both that and my amazing eloquence with the written language. I only have one app to recommend: Fitness Point Pro, and it’s all you’ll ever need. Don’t disappoint me, go download it. Download it NOW, show me how serious you are. The price of the pro version easily outweighs the value that you’ll obtain from using this app over the coming years, and if you need to be convinced before investing a lofty $4.99 then go ahead and download the free version first – available on both iPhone and Android.
I’m not a hypocrite. I use it myself.
Did you download the app yet?
Skeptifit 