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Getting Fit – Achieve Your Fitness Goals With Behaviour Modification

Making Those New Year’s Resolutions A Reality With “Behaviour Modification”

The holiday season is a busy social time for many people, and this means our exercise routines often go out the window. When this happens it can be hard to get back into the exercise habit, so in this post we share some simple ways to help you get back into your fitness routine and head into 2022 feeling motivated and refreshed.

As a bonus, it’s worth noting that these tips have been shown to effectively drive behaviour change in almost any area of our lives, not just getting fit!

Setting Smart Goals

Firstly, when addressing behaviour change you’ll need to set yourself up some goals, SMART goals to be exact. These goals are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time based, and are useful tool when planning what you want to achieve and when. So ask yourself are your goals SMART? i.e. I want to engage in 4 gym sessions a week by the end of 8 weeks. Or I want to lose 5cm around my waist in 4 weeks.

Assessing Barriers and Facilitators

Next, you’ll need to think about what will encourage or stop you from engaging in said behaviour. What are your facilitators or barriers?

Ask yourself, what motivates you to perform a behaviour? Are you a social person and being with friends gets you up and about? This approach to a would be a facilitating behaviour.

Certain things will also stop you in engaging in a behaviour eg tiredness, don’t have time, or just not motivated. These are barriers to behaviour and are very common when you’re just starting to work on changing a behaviour. When working through these it’s really helpful to brainstorm ways around these barriers, for example if you’re feeling tired, what time of day do you feel most energised? Can you perform the targeted behaviour then?

Self-monitoring

A great way to continue and maintain a behaviour is through self-monitoring techniques; diaries, attendance charts, writing up results to see improvements, plus many more ways can be used in ways to keep you motivated.

Use A Gradual Program To Develop A Routine

Don’t overwhelm yourself from the get-go. Quite often when people first engage in a behaviour, for example beginning an exercise routine, they overdo it or set an unrealistic expectation. This can increase injury risk and the feeling of burning out, so they end up avoiding the activity all together. You will be far more successful if you start with smaller amounts and then gradually build up.

Increase Your Incidental Exercise

Another good way to increase physical activity is to find ways to increase “incidental exercise”. Incidental exercise is activity which you do that is not specifically planned as exercise time. For example if you catch public transport can you get off a stop earlier or later so you have to walk further? Can you ride a bike instead of driving to work? Can you walk around on your lunch break? You can be very creative with the ways that you increase your incidental exercise, and it’s an effective way to increase your physical activity without having to squeeze more dedicated exercise time into your busy weeks.


Get Fit With Our Exercise Physiologists & Personal Trainers

If you want to get back in shape but just can’t seem to get it together, we can help. Our exercise physiologists and personal trainers will work with you to set goals, increase your motivation, get you on the right program to achieve results while training safely and avoiding injury, plus give you all the encouragement and guidance that you need. All sessions take place in our fully-equipped onsite gym with a friendly team that will support and encourage you every step of the way.

For more information & bookings call us on 9280 2322, contact us or book online.



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