The Resolution Riddle

 

This Year I Will…!

I’ve been a personal trainer long enough to have seen the “New Year’s Bump” in health club memberships, exercise classes, and diet programs. If the day after Thanksgiving is “Black Friday” for retailers, then New Year’s resolutions produce “Black January” for health clubs. I’ve also seen the empty locker rooms and canceled classes and watched the dust settle on exercise equipment come February. Check eBay in March or April for good deals on home exercise equipment (“For sale: NordicTrack trainer, used as coat rack.”)

Long- term exercisers in public gyms hate the New Year. The gym is crowded with neophytes who do too much talking and not enough working. They don’t know what to do, so they try each machine for a few reps and then sit there staring, listening to their iPod. They are feeling intimidated, lost, and confused. All the “old-timers” knows they will be gone in a few days or weeks, like tourists at the beach, so they just put up with them.

Can you tell I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions? It’s not that they are intrinsically bad, it’s simply because they so seldom take root and grow. When most people make a resolution and then don’t follow through, they react in one of three ways. Either they pretend it doesn’t matter because it wasn’t something they wanted anyway, or they rationalize their failure by blaming their circumstances or saying it is something out of their control. Lastly and most damaging, they take the failure personally and internalize it. This damages their self-esteem, creating fertile ground for continued failure and frustration. 

There has got to be a better way.

 

Top of the Wish List

Within the top ten resolutions are getting fit, losing weight, eating better, and breaking the tobacco addiction. Often all four of these are lumped together within the simply stated desire to get healthier. That is a big list to accomplish even when taken one at a time with a well-thought-out plan and a lot of support. To decide to change your life on the spur of the moment late on New Year’s Day, as you sit zoned out in front of the TV, staring at a bowl game feeling guilty after pigging out since Christmas, is a recipe for disaster.

New Year’s resolutions tend to involve the habits or problems that have been issues in your life for quite some time. They are the first things that pop into your head when you contemplate self-improvement. Occasionally they are the first thing that pops into your spouse’s head when he or she contemplates your self-improvement, too. Either way, they are hot-button issues, things that you are doing or not doing that are having a negative effect on your life. They often involve habits and addictions that have physical, emotional, and psychological ramifications. Tackling some of these issues may require the assistance of competent healthcare professionals. If you are in a situation involving drugs (including tobacco), alcohol, or binge eating, it is important for you to get professional help. These aren’t problems easily beaten alone.

 

Successful Resolutions

Being successful in the coming year hinges on your having a comprehensive plan of attack. We talked about SMART goals before, and I can’t stress enough what a powerful tool a well-thought-out plan can be in achieving your desires.

If you have more than one desire, start by prioritizing; pick one that will have a big, immediate, positive effect on your life. This may be the easiest one–the low-hanging fruit, so to speak. There is nothing wrong with starting with something that nearly guarantees success. It is helpful to have an early success to build on, and an easily attained goal may provide just that. There is a reason NCAA Division I basketball and football teams schedule smaller division II and III teams to start the season. Their performance in these games can identify problems areas that need additional work while still providing a win to build confidence, and that is a good thing.

Too often someone will tell me they have decided to lose a lot of weight, maybe 50 pounds. This is a huge undertaking, like playing the number one team in the season opener. I feel sorry for them, because the odds of their success are too small to calculate. I try to walk them through the SMART goal process, but frequently they are too impatient and blinded by enthusiasm to listen. These people soon run into all the problems that got them where they are right now and without a plan to deal with them they fail. Then out of embarrassment, they hide themselves away for another year.

If they had set a goal of, say, eating fast food half as often as they do now, they would have had a much better chance of some amount of success. Perhaps it wouldn’t have been as dramatic as saying they were going to lose 50 pounds, but it would have been an achievable and sustainable accomplishment.

 

Know Yourself

As a firefighter, you have already proven that you are capable of accomplishing big things. You have studied and trained, been tested and proven yourself. Now it is time to be internally honest.

Go back to you initial physical assessment. There it is in black and white; you know what needs to be done. You know what changes will improve your life both in and out of the fire service, and it is tough to admit that the only thing standing in your way is you.

Identifying the roadblocks you have set up to protect yourself from possible failure is a sobering exercise. Perhaps you can take solace in the knowledge that every successful person has had to go through the same exercise at some point. Looking at yourself in the mirror and seeing your strengths and positive attributes as well as the areas that need improvement is the first step in making the coming year your best one yet. Set yourself up for success, and next year your resolutions will be entirely new, positive, and exciting.

Michael Krueger is an NSCA-certified personal trainer. He got his start in fitness training while serving in the United States Coast Guard. He works with firefighters and others in and around Madison, Wisconsin. He is available to fire departments, civic organizations, and athletic teams for training, consulting, and speaking engagements. He has published numerous articles on fitness, health, and the mind-body connection and was a featured speaker at the IAFC’s FRI 2009 Health Day in Dallas, Texas. E-mail him at MKPTLLC@gmail.com. 

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