Give Your 2020 Fitness A Head Start In December

As 2019 comes to an end, it is tempting to back off your training during the silly season with the intent you will get back into it in the new year.

If you have been training consistently all year, you can probably afford to have a few quiet weeks and be confident that you will hit the ground running in 2020.

But if you are in the process of developing a new training routine that has not quite become a habit yet, it is not the best idea to take a break now, because you will have to start fresh again next year.

Instead, you should modify your training sessions and expectations to suit the silly season. Maybe train three times per week instead of five, or you reduce the duration of your sessions from 60-minutes to 25-minutes.

Anything that you can do that will keep you active during the next month will give you a massive head start on your fitness goals for 2020.

Instead of starting all over, you will be continuing on from the work you have done during December. There will be more incentive to get going straight away — to maintain your progress — instead of it being easy to push the start date back later into January.

My clients have just begun their December training programs and each have their own approach to managing this time of year.

Some people are increasing their training volume or adding in some different training types, such as hiking, as they will have more time to train or travel to different locations.

Some are focussing on bodyweight training sessions that they can do at anytime, anywhere, as they will be travelling and without access to their usual training facilities.

Some are cutting down their training session times to ensure workouts take less than 20-minutes. This will allow them to sneak away from the family and into the gym to maintain their strength.

And others are doing longer sessions, with less frequency, because it is going to be harder to find times to train during the next month.

These clients are all experienced trainees who want to keep active during December.

But what if you have not got a solid routine in place?

My recommendation would be to start allocating time to exercise at least three times per week. It does not matter what type of exercise or for how long, simply starting to make exercise a part of your routine will give you a massive advantage for 2020.

I talk about the idea of ‘accumulating minutes’ of exercise when getting started. The more time you spend moving, the easier it becomes to get started during the next session and the more your fitness will develop.

The more minutes you accumulate, the less resistance you find to starting your next session. If you have not trained for six-weeks, it seems hard to get yourself motivated to get the heart rate up. But if you have already trained twice that week, it is much easier to go again and complete a solid week.

You might think that 2019 has been a bad year for your health and fitness. Maybe you gained a few kilograms or maybe you just did not start the training regime that you planned on doing.

But no matter what you have done to this point in the year, there is still time to make meaningful progress that will put you in a stronger position for 2020.

Most people will not do it, they will wait until the new year and hope it brings with it a new them.

I am not sure if you have tried this before, but in my experience, it never works.

What does work is to take small steps right now, that will give you an advantage that you can build on in 2020.