An Exercise Physiologist can keep you on track.
It’s February 1st, which means that we are a month into 2026 and your New Years’ Resolution.
Today, I wanted to help you understand common New Years Resolution mistakes that I see.
Setting a goal or goals for the New Year is a fairly common practice, and for 48% of the population, that resolution will be to improve fitness.
Unfortunately, that goal normally lasts about 4-8 weeks, before it starts to drop off.
And that happens for a range of reasons, whether its unrealistic expectations, no clear training plan or progression, over-training, or lack of accountability.
Fortunately, that is where Exercise Physiology can help.
Why People Stop Going to the Gym
Any regular gym-goer would be able to tell you about the New Year rush. T
hat week after January 1st is chaos.
The gym is bursting with new faces and exercises you’ve never seen before. Then in about 4 weeks’ time, it settles back down, the regular faces are still there and most of the new faces have vanished.
So, what happens?
Lack of a clear plan and over-training.
As an exercise physiologist, I find it much easier to train when I have a clear gym program that is planned out for the next 6-8 weeks.
I can rock up to the gym, check my training app for today’s session and get started.
No wondering about what exercises to pick, what sets and reps to do or if I should train lowers vs uppers.
What can also happen without a clear plan, is over-training.
The enthusiasm to get fit outweighs your current fitness. Training 4-5 times a week is great when you have built up the capacity for that, and when you have the diet and sleep schedule to support it.
For someone that hasn’t stepped foot in the gym for a while, it leads to some significant muscle soreness and questioning of why you decided to get fit in the first place.
Unrealistic Expectations
Adaptations take time. If we could touch a barbell once and get stronger, we’d all be ripped, but the human body doesn’t operate like that.
It takes around 6 weeks before we start to see some changes, with these being related to your coordination and movement patterns. Essentially, you get better at doing the exercise and because of that can lift more weight.
To see changes in body composition (increase in muscle mass, decrease in body fat), that will take at least 12 weeks.
Lack of Accountability
When you are training yourself, it’s much easier to pick the lighter weight or set the treadmill speed a bit lower or even give the gym a miss that day.
And I’ve experienced this myself, your motivation can wane, and getting home to eat dinner and watch TV always sounds like the nicer option after a long workday.
Combined with not having a clear gym plan, unrealistic expectations, and over-training, all of a sudden that goal of “get fit” can start to feel like a steeper climb. The muscle soreness stops feeling like the sign of a good workout and becomes an inconvenience for the next 2 days.
The Exercise Physiology Way.
At Exercise Physiology, the first time we meet you, we ask you a range of questions.
- What brings you in today
- Have you ever seen an exercise physiologist before
- Do you have any old injuries or medical conditions we should be aware of
- What do you want to get out of our exercise sessions
Then we run through a bunch of assessments to see your current strength levels and to inform us on how to create the best exercise program for you.
Why am I telling you this?
Because what we do helps to counter those issues we listed above.
An initial consult allows us to design a program tailored to your needs. No more guessing or just doing the same program each day.
We can design the program in a way that allows for adequate recovery time between sessions to prevent you from over-training.
We can help set realistic expectations about how long it will take you to achieve your goals and help set mini goals to reach along the way.
And we can help keep you accountable so you can keep completing gym sessions and crushing goals.