The holidays are great for many reasons. Dinners and parties with family and friends are all great, however, they often force our fitness routine to the back burner. It is important to implement what we like to call a "maintenance strategy” during the busy, stressful holiday season. You’ve worked so hard this year; the goal now is to just stay on track and not get derailed. Once the holidays are over, it’s full steam ahead!
What is a maintenance strategy? It is a combination of goal setting and exercise volume manipulation.
Step one is to set some goals for the holiday season. We’ve found that goals are achieved when two things happen. First, you break down what you want to do (your goal) into specific skills. Second, you build those skills through practice or daily actions.
Write out what your "I’ll be happy when…” goals are. Grab your phone and open the notes app to write a few out. Break down the goals into the specific skills needed to accomplish them. For example if ‘you’ll be happy when you lose 10 pounds, then think about what skills are needed to achieve this? Maybe it’s eating better consistently. The final piece of the goal-setting puzzle is to take the skill and put it into practice. This might look like eating slowly and only eating until satisfied, not stuffed.
Therefore, over the course of the holidays the practice of eating slowly and eating until satisfied will help build the skill of eating better consistently. Practice skills, build skills and achieve goals.
The second piece of the maintenance strategy is exercise volume manipulation. This equates to altering your exercise time so that it does not overwhelm or burden you during the busy holiday season. This will make it easier and more likely to happen if you know you will not be overwhelmed.
There are a few ways to achieve this. One of the easiest ways is to use blocks of time. To do this you pick 3 or 4 exercises, put a 10-minute timer on, and perform the exercises in a rotation. This is a great way to control your volume and manage your time efficiently.
Getting involved with a personal trainer, or doing a group exercise class is another effective way of utilizing the maintenance method. Personal trainers will have you working harder, smarter and more efficiently. Scheduled appointments help you manage the volume/time challenge and hold you accountable.
By: Personal Trainer Team Leaders Bob Talamini, Sean Cashman and Connie Emmerson