How to achieve your fitness goals in 2015
I’ve written about how at Yomp we apply behaviour change theories to inspire people to be more active more often. I’ve also written a little bit about my personal 30-day challenges. I thought it would be a good idea to describe how I used the theory behind a behaviour change model to reach my exercising goals last November.
As the New Year is just around the corner, I’m sure you could use some of the following tricks to reach your January goals.
My aims at the beginning of November were:
- To run a cumulative distance of 100 km
- To do 60 press-ups at one go (at the beginning of the month I could only manage about 15…)
- To increase my planking time from one to four minutes
To ensure that I reached my objectives I applied the theory behind the Fogg Behaviour Model.
What is it? Developed in 2011 by B.J. Fogg, this model indicates that behaviour change occurs once triggered only when motivation levels are high and/or when our ability to complete a task is increased. Of course, the behaviour we want to achieve has to be clearly defined (you can’t score without a goal).
In my case, the goals were defined using the SMART approach (they were Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely) and the behaviours I wanted to trigger were to do press-ups and planks on a daily basis and to run at least twice in any given week.
Right, so how did I apply the theory from the Fogg Behaviour Model?
Ability: all three exercises are relatively easy to perform. But, just in case, I visited a few websites to ensure I did my press-ups and planking correctly.
What’s more, both planking and press-ups are not location dependant. I did mine in my bedroom, before or after work, but they can be performed almost anywhere.
To make my running slightly easier, I always had a fresh outfit ready. Just so I didn’t have an extra excuse not to go out.
If your exercises are more difficult, get a session or two with a personal trainer to make sure you perform them correctly.
Motivation: I was obviously motivated to reach my monthly goals, but the key here is to sufficiently increase motivation at least once a day. These tools were helpful:
- Tracking progress: it was motivating to see my personal progress — both in press-ups as well as in planking. For press-ups, I was using a simple 30-day programme from the Livestrong Foundation’s website, and for my planking, I was writing results on my bedroom wall. It was crude, but effective.
- Sharing progress with one or more people and keeping each other accountable. This one was the key for me — knowing that there was another person keeping me accountable to exercise daily was motivating. As an experiment, I used MakeMe and shared all three exercises with my colleague Crispin. I didn’t like the app very much, but it worked sufficiently well for me to keep using it until the end of the month. Quite simply, every time I exercised, I logged the activity on the app — Crispin would be notified that I had performed my exercise.
I would not recommend MakeMe (for the reasons I outlined in the last paragraph here), so some other tools you could use are:
· a simple Google Spreadsheet (which my friends and I used once for tracking our running progress in June)
· a dedicated shared notebook on Evernote (the ability to add photos to confirm your workout is certainly a nice bonus)
- Another tool for increasing motivation is a friendly competition with friends on a leaderboard (particularly useful for running or cycling etc.). I compete with my running friends on Nike+. The leaderboard is based on distance so the further you run, the better you rank.
Triggers: it’s the last, but equally essential, part of the Fogg’s equation. I used three simple methods to prompt me to exercise:
- iPhone calendar — I scheduled reminders in my calendar for daily 15-minute slots to perform the press-ups and planks. If I missed my morning slot, I’d simply move it to the evening. I also scheduled reminders for two runs a week.
- Having my exercise plan and tracking pinned to a wall in a visible place — every time I entered the bedroom, I’d see the plan. And yes, as time goes by, you get used to it so its triggering effect eventually wears off. Nevertheless, it was fairly powerful at the beginning of the challenge.
- Notifications sent by Crispin — I was notified every time he performed his exercise. Therefore, I’d not only keep him accountable and remind him if necessary, but the alerts also acted as useful triggers for my own exercising.
How did it go?
I’m happy to say that I managed to achieve or exceed all of my three goals:
- I finished November with exactly 100km of running logged.
- I managed to do 60 press-ups on 30th November and I noticed a considerable increase in my upper body strength.
- Exceeding my initial aim, I planked for 4:15 minutes on the last day of the month. This one was the hardest to achieve, and yet the most satisfying.
All of the above results contributed to some extent to altering the appearance of my body — I lost some weight, increased my body strength and a few muscles became toned.
So there you go. I’ve just shown you what worked for me, but I can reassure you the model works for other people too. Remember — the key for successfully changing your behaviour is to reduce the difficulty of your challenges, remain motivated and set up reminders at appropriate times.
Good luck, and make 2015 special. It’s yours!
