How To Train a Habit: Exercise During the Summer

During the summer months, we tend to go outside more often and decrease our weekly exercise sessions. Here are 3 steps to keep up good habits. 

Longer days, work drinks, and summer parties. It’s the time of year that your diary starts filling up; the cold winter days are long behind. Leaving the weather behind might be a dream right now, but what about leaving your training? The change in routine and social demand that summer brings has you shirking away from this hard-earned momentum. It’s important that rather than threaten or hinder your fitness, the summer should be an ally to progress. A second gust of enthusiasm as you pivot into a new season.

Coupled with summer being a more sociable time of year, we tend to set aspirations and goals in January. These goals are near completion, completely forgotten about, or becoming tediously familiar. Rather than fall by the wayside we need a system to ensure the summer months are ever-strong.

Here are 3 actionable steps that you can implement today:

 Ride the wave of summer

The summer months in many countries are synonymous with better weather and long evenings, so make your training in line with this. In addition to running in the gym, track an outdoor run. Use the opportunity to apply your newly built fitness to taking up tennis or surfing. The "Ride the Waves" training program on Technogym App, prepared by Italian surfing star Leonardo Fioravanti, will help you improve stability, strength and flexibility and face the waves with the right grit.
The mix of accountability and utilising your surroundings, hopefully, better weather, will keep your regime engaging.

Reset: Step up your goals

You can achieve anything if you set good enough goals and stick to the plan. Psychology professor Dr. Gail Matthews, at the Dominican University in California, led a study on goal-setting with nearly 270 participants. It found that you are 42 percent more likely to achieve your goals if you write them down. 

This is something we are great at doing in January but don’t continue to revisit these through the year. So far, you have built a solid foundation from January to now, but if you are to stay engaged you must continue to challenge yourself. To continue to innovate, the same goal-setting principles used in January should be repeated now, like a financial review. Ask what has worked well and what you have enjoyed? And what did you not enjoy, or progress as successfully on?
Use this opportunity to draw a fresh start on your training, whether it was good or bad, and push toward that next upgraded version of you.

Pivot towards your weakness

By this point, you have reviewed the previous few months and there has been some progress. Also, there are some points to work on and areas that you have neglected because naturally, we cannot work on everything at the same time. Your strength increased and ran a half marathon, congratulations! But flexibility has become a weak point and something neglected amongst the hard training.

This is the beauty of the Technogym app. Rather than feeling lost, you can pivot your goals based on what you would like to improve by changing your workout goal. Choosing a Stretch & Relax workout is going to recharge your energy to leave you feeling more mobile and invigorated. You can even choose what equipment you have to ensure the working out doesn’t stop on holiday!

The summer months should be an asset to lean into with training, not to shirk away from or fall away from progress. By getting clear on resetting your goals and pivoting where necessary to a new focus you will feel aligned with the summer. A fresh lease of life to have you progressing for another six months.