You’ve made your list of New Year’s Resolutions………..

YOU’RE GOING TO GET OFF THE COUCH AND GET FIT !

Specifically……….. you want to burn some of the many calories you have managed to store, over the holidays.   You want to give your fat cells a makeover.

But…. burning calories is hard work.

And, to make matters worse, you are one of those people that loathes to exercise.

So you need a little help, getting and staying motivated.

Get an exercise buddy

The first thing you need to do, is decide what you plan on doing, but you should do something, irrespective of how big your belly is. That said, exercise programmes are not all created equal – you need to choose wisely.

HINT : The type of exercise is not as important as you might think, the instructor is.

The second thing to do – persuade someone to join you. Doing anything with someone else makes it more fun. And making a commitment to someone else, automatically makes you more committed. You’re way more likely to show up, if you promised to join “SUE” or “TOM” at the gym.

So…….. who should you choose ?

A partner in crime

Odds are, you’re looking through your list of friends for someone who is a lot like you.

NOT SO FIT, BUT THEY WANNA-BE

Committing to exercise together will make you “partners in crime”. You will become fit together. Bond, commiserate………. Plus, you won’t look like a twit.

Hang on a minute…….

Partnering up with someone who is just like you, might not be as motivating as you think. You would be better choosing a partner who is a whole lot FITTER than you.

Seriously…..

In the dust

It sounds counter intuitive and hugely demotivating, to be lining up alongside a FITNESS fundi. But……… research from Kansas State University, suggests being “left in the dust”, by your exercise buddy, brings out the best in you.

In the study they ran in their exercise lab – pairing up ordinary college girls, with a “fit friend”, produced a 200 % performance improvement in bike riding, of the UNFIT girl in the partnership.

That is a lot more calories being burned during a “bike” ride. Maybe enough to burn off that Coke you cooled down with.

The power of a fit “friend”

When the girls hopped on the bikes, at the start of the study – most of them were “finished” after 10 minutes. By “finished” I mean all bicycled out. A sign of the times ? College girls are not all that fit.

But when they worked out with a “fit friend”, who had been able to ride a few minutes longer, they pulled out the stops. They wheeled like crazy, coming pretty close to matching the “fit friend’s” performance.

Now just in case you’re wondering about this “fit friend” – she was not an Olympic athlete, who happened to work out in the university labs. She was just one of the “girls”, who had enrolled in the study, but performed well on the first ride. Of course, she didn’t actually exist, she had been “created” by the research team – the magic of the experimental set up.

Officially “she” was working out in another lab and could be seen wheeling along on her bicycle, through a video monitor. In reality, “she” was not riding the bicycle in real time, it was a looped video.

Not a one off thing

So PRIDE is motivating in the moment.

No one wants to look weak and pathetic, so in the moment, you reach deep within, to give it all you’ve got. But, being left in the dust, EVERYTIME…. has the potential to be demotivating. No point in playing a game you can’t win.

Well that would be my philosophy. If you can’t be THE BEST, don’t bother.

But in this group of girls, consistently being left in the dust, turned out to be motivating. They continued to show up and go for it. Clearly, HOPING that this time would be different – a bit like the serial gambler ?

Your partner MUST be FITTER than you

The team tried various “friends” in the window, to establish the ideal friend, for a fitness programme.

They discovered…..

It only works if you BELIEVE your “friend”, is a little bit better than you.

If you think they’re just like you………… it doesn’t work. And if you think they’re SUPERHUMAN………. it doesn’t work either.

Phone a friend

So who do you know that is FITTER THAN YOU, but not a fitness rockstar ?

Make an appointment with them to exercise together. Show up and burn some calories !

PS. Don’t make the mistake of talking, instead of working out. And for heavens sake, don’t follow your workout with a calorie laden smoothie from the gym coffee shop. Eish ! It happens. Why a fake friend might be better !

Further reading

Exercise can make-over your fat cells even if you’re not losing weight	Don’t run around the block three times just run for the bus	Fitness runs in families – fit fathers begat fit kids

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