At the beginning of every new year, millions of us create resolutions about what we are going to do differently this year.
Gyms start to get crowded (well, at least pre-pandemic) and good intentions flow freely.
But the harsh reality is that most of these well-intentioned people fail.
A study by researchers at Scranton University found that only 19 percent of individuals keep their resolutions. Most are abandoned by mid-January.
What’s going on? Is it lack of motivation, will power, or discipline? Or is it something else?
Getting in shape, getting out of debt, and getting more organized are often the top three most common new year’s resolutions.
For runners, your top picks might be to train for a new race distance, hit the weights more often, or finally get into a mobility or foam rolling routine a few times a week.
Maybe you had an extra-indulgent holiday season (and there’s nothing wrong with that) and you are just not feeling comfortable in your body on your runs, like you do when everything is on track.
Resolving to address all of this on January 1 can be a tempting idea. It’s a new year and it’s time for a fresh start. Let’s use strength training as an example today, but as you’ll see, it could be about anything you’d like to change.
On day 1, you are full of motivation and excitement and you’re dreaming about the new you that is about to emerge. You’ve heard me say on this podcast a million times about how important strength training is for your running and your longevity and now is the time that you are finally going to be the runner that you’ve always wanted to be.
So you scroll through YouTube and find a perfect strength training video and you hit it hard. Yes, you’ll be sore the next day, but hey, that’s part of the deal when you are getting back in shape, right?
Sure enough, you are sore the next day. Really sore. But you can’t give up on day 2, and you do it again. It’s a lot harder than the first day and you are moving much slower, but you muscle through it. Literally.
Day 3 rolls around and you are starting to really question yourself. It hurts to walk, it hurts to run, it even hurts to lift your cup of coffee. Maybe it’s time for a rest day.
The rest day certainly helps, but your motivation to strength train again is starting to fade. You start to remember why it’s never been a habit for you, because it’s hard, you don’t like it, and you’ve never been able to stick to a routine. Maybe you’ll just go for a run instead and if you feel okay at the end, you’ll do a few lunges and squats. But then you forget about that and hit the shower instead.
By mid to late January, you are right back where you started, but now, you feel the guilt and shame of failing what you set out to do.
So what happened? And why are you one of the 81% that have failed? What is the other 19% doing differently? Do they just have more willpower?
The simplest answer is that you aren’t ready to change just yet.
Now, I can hear people saying, no, I am totally ready! I know I need to do this and I want the results and there’s something about the change in the calendar that’s motivating, right? Well, if that’s the stage you are in, then you still have a little ways to go.
That’s because according to psychologists, there are five stages of behavior change. If you are not in the exact stage for action when January 1st rolls around, you are not going to be ready and you are much more likely to fail.
The good news is that none of the stages require willpower.
The first stage is called Precontemplation. It’s where you deny having a problem, but other people may be concerned. Back to our strength training example, if you’ve never really incorporated it into your running, you might not think that it’s all that important. You’re doing fine without it.
Stage two is Contemplation. This is when you think about the pros and cons of change. You’ve read a running book or listened to this podcast and you start to think that strength training can really help you, but you’ve never really taken to it, so it’s going to be hard.
Stage three is Preparation. You begin to take steps to get ready to make a change. You invest in some weights, join a gym, and check out a few online strength videos. This is a common place to simmer for a long time, especially with unlimited information at our fingertips. Learning a little bit about the kind of strength training runners need is awesome. Falling down an endless rabbit hole of every way you can possibly strength train can trap you into paralysis. So do some homework, but accept that you’ll need to learn and adjust even more as you take action.
Stage four is where things actually start happening and it’s appropriately called the Action stage. You go to the gym or start doing strength work at home.
And finally, the last stage is Maintenance, which is where most people fall off the wagon. This is when you finally figure out how to stick to your change over the long-term.
What seems to happen with New Year’s resolutions is that people think the change in year means they are ready when they haven’t gone through the stages to really get there. An arbitrary deadline comes and goes and if you haven’t come up with your maintenance plan before you took action, those actions are less likely to become a real habit.
So what’s a better way? I’ll go over that when we come back.
After learning that more than 80% of New Year’s resolutions fail, it might be tempting to never even make one. I actually think that’s an excellent idea! January 1 is no more special than January 7 or 21st or whatever date on the calendar. When you are fully committed and prepared to change, that will set you up for success.
So let’s get into how to prepare your resolution to increase your chances that it will stick this time.
The first step is to be very specific. Instead of saying, “I want to strength train more,” a better, more specific plan would be to say, “I am going to strength train for twenty minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays after my run.”
By being very specific, it’s clear what you need to do, not what you want to achieve. You have a lot more control over your actions than you do your results, so having a very specific action plan is key.
The other important part about the resolution to strength train on Tuesdays and Thursdays is that it is not overly ambitious. If you instead resolve to hit the gym every day when you weren’t even going once a month, that’s a recipe for burnout. It’s simply too dramatic a change to be achievable for most people.
In the beginning, you might find that your 20 minutes, twice a week plan is actually too easy. That is a good thing, because, at the risk of oversimplifying things, it’s far easier to do easy things than hard things! Try not to get caught up in your ego and push it to 30 minutes or add in Wednesday and Saturday. The goal at first is to create a habit; it’s not actually about the strength training itself just yet. Commit to a really doable goal and if you find that you need a little more, wait a few weeks to let the habit settle before adding in more.
The next key to the success of your resolution to strength train for twenty minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays after your run is the last part, “after your run.” First off, from a training perspective, strength training on your hard running days is a great idea. It means that your hard days are truly hard and allows your easy and rest days to be truly easy and restorative. Concentrating your hard efforts on the same day gives you the best opportunity to to recover, which is how we build strength and power.
But the other reason this is a great idea is because you are “habit stacking.” Habit stacking is when you take an action that you already do habitually and add another action that you are trying to make into a habit. If you are already habitually running on Tuesdays and Thursdays, you are already in sweaty workout clothes and it’s not too much of a stretch to add on some strength work. Yes, you might be a little tired from your run to really push it with the weights, but that’s actually a good thing. Remember, we are trying to make our new habit as easy as possible and going light on the weights after a run makes it harder to skip.
What else could you do to reinforce your Tuesday/Thursday strength sessions? Create an environment that triggers you to do the right thing. That could be setting a calendar reminder on your phone that notifies you when you wake up that today is your strength day. It could also be setting your weights and yoga mat by the front door before your run so that they are staring at you when you get home. Maybe you put a sticky note on the bathroom mirror so you see it before you hit the shower. Humans are very visual and these in-your-face reminders can nudge you to take action.
Now what happens if you do everything that I’ve just suggested and you still can’t seem to get the habit to stick? First of all, have some grace with yourself. Habit change is hard and it doesn’t always go the way you want it to and sometimes you need to regress in order to progress. No one does everything that they set out to do and that is okay. So take a break and reassess.
What went wrong? Was your plan too ambitious and unrealistic? If that’s the case, chop it into smaller pieces. So maybe instead of 20 minutes of strength work, you aim for 10 minutes for now. It’s really amazing what you can do in 10 minutes if you give it a chance. And again, when we are habit building, it’s less about the actual activity and more about reinforcing the habit. Even 5 minutes of lifting weights could be enough to check the box, so don’t underestimate the power of “good enough.”
Or perhaps you’re not sticking to strength work because you just don’t like it. It feels like a chore. Well, there’s a couple ways to address that. One view is that sometimes in life, we need to take our medicine and do things we’d rather not do. Twenty minutes of strength work twice a week isn’t exactly digging ditches in a drought, right? Doing the right thing even if it’s a little unpleasant is part of what it means to be a successful adult.
But the other way to look at it is to find a way that you actually can enjoy it. There are a ton of ways to get strong, from bodyweight only to heavy dumbbells to machines at the gym. And there’s also about a million different videos, trainers, group classes, and plans out there for just about every type of person. I promise if you are looking for a way to hate strength work, you can find it and if you are looking for a way to enjoy it, you can find that too.
And finally, my last tip is to give your new habit a performance goal of its own. In running, we often have performance goals that are motivating, such as a specific race distance or time. We come up with elaborate running schedules and plans all in service of one day reaching a performance milestone. So why not set one for strength training as well? Yes, the main goal of your strength training is to support your running and stay injury free, but what if you set benchmarks in the weight room as well? This could be something like working on your pushups so that you can finally do 10 in a row on your toes. Or maybe you can work on your deadlift so that you are lifting x amount of pounds. Or how about getting strong enough to master the pullup? Find something interesting and exciting that you’d like to brag about to your running buddies and train for it! Collecting achievements can be addictive, confidence boosting, and can completely shift your outlook.
So if by the time you listen to this, you’ve already tossed out your New Year’s resolutions, good for you! New habits don’t form with the changing of the calendar. Long-lasting habits are created when you are ready, with a specific and achievable plan for incremental yet consistent change.
From all of us at the Run to the Top and RunnersConnect.net, Happy New Year!
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