The Absolute Best Way to Get Into Shape (In 5 Steps)

If you’re part of the New Year’s resolution gang of gym goers who fill up the local health club in the beginning of each year, only to slowly disappear as the year flies on, you’re definitely not alone, but you definitely also have to change your approach to fitness for more effectiveness. We all have different health and fitness goals, but those of us who manage to achieve those goals do so by sticking to a very effective five-step plan.

1. Find a Good Reason to Get into Shape

The first step is to identify a good personal reason to get into shape. This may seem a bit obvious, but sticking to your commitment to get and stay in shape often comes down to little isolated decisions to get up and get active or to skip what very quickly becomes a string of sessions. If you don’t have a good enough reason to compel you to stick to your training regime, or if you don’t have a defined reason at all, you’re just starting yourself off at a big disadvantage.

2. Create Urgency

Even a solid primary reason to get into shape sometimes falsl short of keeping you motivated to stick to your exercise regime. This is when some urgency needs to be created, like perhaps signing up to Maxinutrition’s 30 day body transformation challenge, which offers up a nice VIP trip to Ibiza as an extra incentive for kicking your body into beach-ready shape. The important part here is the “30 days” in the 30-day challenge. That’s the type of urgency you should always look to create, which can also be accomplished by booking and paying for your spot in something like an upcoming marathon or obstacle course race.

3. Accountability

Let people know what your fitness goals are and in so doing create an accountability reference point that’s near impossible to renege on. Upload a “before” pic to your social network profile for example, with the promise of an “after” pic coming soon. A gym buddy can always be easily avoided and as a fellow fitness fanatic, they’ll probably quite easily buy your excuses for not working hard enough on achieving your goals, so you simply have to create situations in which you have no choice but to account. That will make you find a way to make it happen.

4. Create a Detailed Exercise Terrace

Getting good fitness results without a proper plan is like winning the lottery. You have to have a plan in place which is specially-designed for your specific fitness goals. Map everything out down to details such as when you’ll have resting days and when you might have an extra day to possibly catch up on a session or two you may have missed earlier.

5. Create a Back-Up Plan

Finally, those extra potential “catch-up” days form part of having a back-up plan in place. There are periods in our lives when we tend to get extremely busy and our exercise regime is then often the first to fly out the window. Having a back-up plan also entails a set of improvised exercises you might want to draw on if for instance you’re away on a business trip and all you have time for, in an attempt to get in some exercise, are some of those exercises which you can complete in your hotel room, or any other space which requires improvisation.