December Blog: Holiday Maintenance Plan

It’s almost that time of year again! The holidays, gifts, snow, and most importantly the FOOD. Although this time of year is meant for getting together and giving out gifts and enjoying time with family, it doesn’t mean we skip out on the gym and lose out on the 11 months of hard work we all have been putting in. Daylight savings time has ended and the late night gym sessions are harder and harder to go to.  It’s easy to let things go at the end of the year, relax, and let the ones who really want to attain their goals actually reach them; while also having a majority of the crowd set the same new years resolutions year after year. Time is not on our sides as schedules start to get more and more packed. SO WHAT DO WE DO? Here are 4 tips to help you maintain the hard work you’ve put in and continue killing your goals leading to next year without spilling over this holiday year again! 
 
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 1. FRIENDS: This is the time to call on your friends. Even if you usually exercise alone, you may need someone to help keep you motivated. Many studies have shown that social support helps keep people active. 

2. GET A TRAINER: What better way then to hire someone who will motivate, inspire, and push your limits in the gym during this time of year. It’s also harder to back out of a gym day when you are paying for the session so that will give you even more incentive to get up and get to the gym. 

3. GYM ALTERNATIVES: You may think you have this whole gym thing down, but the darkness in the morning and the early evening’s can break even the best gym-lover’s routine up. Use what you have learned in the gym and try to work out at home with weights or even doing body weight exercises at home can help maintain the hard work put in. 

4. QUALITY > QUANTITY: Decreasing the number of days you exercise doesn’t hurt if you maintain the same intensity and time. An example would be doing an hour of low intensity interval training as apposed to 10 minutes of high intensity interval training. At the end of the day, it’s about how many calories were burned. 

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