Thoughts on Forming New Training Habits

Forwarded this in an email? Subscribe for all things bendy here:

My gym, usually quiet at mid-day, was packed when I arrived today. All the personal trainers were on the floor and every station was occupied. It has arrived, the New Year’s resolution season…

According to Drive Research, 3 in 10 adults make New Year’s Resolutions, but by the end of the year over 80% have given up. This makes sense. It is very hard to change an established habit. If only it were just about wanting it bad enough, or being “self-disciplined,” we would all be healthy monsters.

But changing your life involves a lot of moving parts. We don’t exist in a vacuum, all options are spread out before us like a buffet so all we have to do is “make better choices.” Getting to the gym, working out, improving mobility, learning new skills, all involves time, energy, money, resources, and logistics.

The truth is that relying on willpower to change our habits results in very poor outcomes. It’s not because we aren’t strong, determined people but because that’s just not how people work.

Back in the doldrums of 2020 I listened to an episode of The Hidden Brain with Shankar Vedantam in which he interviews Wendy Wood, the author of Good Habits, Bad Habits: The Science Of Making Positive Changes That Stick. Wood has studied how people change their habits over the long term. This is her take on willpower:

Wood talks about how willpower is a finite resource and the people who consistently stick with something that may seem difficult are able to do it because they have turned that behavior into a habit. So much of our lives is on autopilot, repeating habitual behaviors. When we have a habit it takes willpower to deviate from that activity rather than stick to it, even if that activity is difficult.

If you want to change a habit, like incorporating more movement into your day, Wood says that you have to adapt your life to both reduce the obstacles to doing the thing, and increase the short-term rewards.

Let’s face it, working out is not rewarding in the short term. If you are starting a new training regimen of any kind there is a long period of struggle before anything fun happens. So if you want to do more of it, or a new variety, anticipate that you will need structural support to keep it up.

Support can look like setting up a space to train at home so you don’t have to get to the gym, making yourself an amazing playlist (I can’t work out without my favorite playlists), or establishing a sacred time in your schedule that you know you can keep free.

I’ve also found that one of the best ways to support a new habit is to share it with people around you. It is so much more fun to do a workout with someone, even if it’s a miserable one. Especially if it’s a miserable one, and you can laugh and grump about it together! On days when your willpower just isn’t enough to get you going, a partner can be that short-term reward that makes the difference.

I almost always have a Fit & Bendy sale in January and this year I wanted to do a Bend with Friends BOGO for my Foundations of Flexibility program. Unfortunately Thinkific doesn’t support BOGOs so I’m just making it half off from now until January 8th with the code BENDWITHFRIENDS at checkout and you can invite a friend if you want.

Whether or not foundational mobility is on your goals list, remember that New Year’s Resolutions are completely unnecessary for developing new habits. That same study found that over half of the people who made New Year’s resolutions did so because they felt pressure to change themselves in some way. An effort to change your habits that is built on external pressure seems extremely unlikely to succeed.

If you are content with your current habits, or not in a good place to make a change, or not sure what you want to do next, then carry on friend. New Year’s Day holds no special magic. A big part of making sustainable change is picking the right time to do it.

Sale info one more time:

Foundations of Flexibility 28-Day Mobility Program, 50% off with code BENDWITHFRIENDS through January 8th

Happy New Year my fellow humans!

Happy Bendings,

Kristina