My Fitness Resolutions for 2010

Hey guys.  I hope you had a good Christmas and New Year.  I expect by now most of you will have settled back into work and have enjoyed the first month of 2010.  Hopefully you have all managed to stick to the resolutions you made for the year so far.  Today I am going to kick off the content on the Free Fitness Tips Blog for 2010 with a slightly belated post on whether I achieved my fitness resolutions for 2009, what my fitness resolutions are for 2010 and what topics I am planning to post on the Free Fitness Tips Blog over the coming months.

REVIEW OF MY 2009 FITNESS RESOLUTIONS

Last year I made 6 fitness resolutions…

1) TO IMPROVE MY FLEXIBILITY:- Overall, I believe I have succeeded at this resolution.  I have improved my flexibility significantly this year by staying behind at the gym after finishing my main workout and doing an extra 10 minutes of stretching.  Whilst I have achieved this resolution there is still room for improvement and I plan to continue stretching consistently to increase my flexibility during 2010.

2) TO DO MORE BODYWEIGHT TRAINING:- Unfortunately I did not succeed when it came to this resolution.  I started off the year by focussing solely on bodyweight training but from February onwards pretty much reverted solely to gym workouts.  So whilst this resolution was not a complete failure, taking the year as a whole I did not achieve this resolution.

3) TO DO MORE RUNNING:- I have improved massively in this area and definitely achieved this resolution during 2009. To do this I incorporated interval sprints into all my gym workouts and also managed to fit in some longer distance outdoor runs throughout the year.  This has allowed me to see huge improvements in my running speeds and cardiovascular fitness.

4) TO ENTER A 10K RUN:- Unfortunately I did not enter a 10K run this year so did not achieve this resolution.

5) TO BE MORE FLEXIBILE WITH MY TRAINING:- Unfortunately this was another fitness resolution I did not achieve this year.  Whilst I started off the year with bodyweight workouts my overall training program was not very flexible.  I spent the majority of the year working out in the gym and did not really focus on other training methods.

6) TO SLEEP MORE:- This is another area I have struggled with and a fitness resolution I failed to achieve.  The reason for this is that on work nights it can be very difficult to fit working, training and preparing my meals into a 16 hour day.

So overall I achieved 2 of 6 resolutions.  Whilst this seems low and there is certainly room for improvement, I have made progress over the year.  Hopefully, 2010 will be an even more successful year in terms of fitness resolutions.

MY FITNESS RESOLUTIONS FOR 2010

Although I did not achieve 4 of my fitness resolutions last year, I am not going to add all of these to my list for 2010 because I do not believe all of them are as relevant now.  Anyway, my fitness resolutions for 2010 are…

1) TO ENTER A 10K RUN:- Although I did not manage to do this last year, I want to enter a 10K run this year.  I believe I am physically ready as I have been running regularly and built up my fitness and stamina.  I just need to make the final push and actually enter an event.

2) TO SLEEP MORE:- Whilst I did struggle last year to get my full 8 hours on work nights it is still something I want to work towards because lack of sleep can have a negative effect on your training, your ability to build muscle and more.

3) TO BE MORE CONSISTENT WITH MY TRAINING:- Over the last few weeks I have started really well by training Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  However, as I get to the mid-point of the week my training starts to tail off for various reasons.  Sometimes I do not even manage to get another session in before the week is over.  Whilst this will inevitably happen sometimes I want to be as consistent as possible with my training this year and make sure that bad weeks are kept to a minimum.

4) TO GET NOTICEABLE IMPROVEMENTS FROM MY TRAINING:- One of the main problems I have with my training is that I struggle to make noticeable improvements in the long term.  This is normally caused by lack of sleep (which can hinder my performance in the gym) and inconsistency (which means that certain muscle groups can get neglected during my training so I lose any improvements in strength, stamina etc).  This year I want to get noticeable improvements from my training by improving in these two areas and also by writing notes during every workout.  This will allow me to track my progress and actually see if I am getting stronger.

5) TO BE MORE CONSISTENT WITH MY BLOG POSTS:- Regular readers of this blog will know that I am quite inconsistent with posting to this blog.  Sometimes I will do 2-3 posts a week then (for various reasons) I will have a barren spell with no posts for a month.  This year I want to be more consistent than ever and ensure that Free Fitness Tips Blog is updated regularly with fresh, unique content.

FREE FITNESS TIPS BLOG POSTS FOR 2010

Last year I did a number of detailed posts on diet and nutrition covering carbohydrates, dietary fats, protein and vitamins.  With my next few posts I want to carry on with this topic area by expanding on the subject of dietary fats and doing some new posts on the different types of minerals out there.  I also want to do some posts later in the year on some of my favourite exercises.  Hopefully, 2010 should be a great year for content at the Free Fitness Tips Blog.

Now I want to hear your comments.  What are your fitness plans for 2010?  Did you achieve the fitness goals you set yourself for 2010?  Let me know by leaving a comment.

My Fitness Resolutions for 2009

Hello everyone.  I hope you all had a good Christmas and wish you all a Happy New Year in 2009.  Hopefully, you didn’t party too hard last night and are able to read this post without too much trouble.  Since New Years Eve is traditionally a time when people make resolutions for the new year I thought today I would put a fitness spin on this theme and post my fitness resolutions for the new year.

1) TO IMPROVE MY FLEXIBILITY:- I’m not naturally very flexible.  I used to be very flexible in my mid-teens because I incorporated stretching into my daily routine.  However, over the last few years stretching has taken a back seat to the other exercises I do.  When I think about it my flexibility is the last thing I want to lose as I get older as it can really affect how mobile you are.  I don’t want to struggle to put my shoes on, to get dressed or to reach things that are on the bottom shelf because I’m not flexible enough.  To remedy this I plan to start making stretching part of my daily routine again.  I’ve been doing it for the last couple of weeks and have noticed the improvements so hopefully in a month or two I will be back to my mid-teen level of flexibility.  Plus, I will be doing some posts on stretching and improving your flexibility so that you guys can learn about the topic too.

2) TO DO MORE BODYWEIGHT TRAINING:- I like exercising in the gym which is fine.  However, there are undoubtedly times when I will not have access to a gym.  One such time was the past week when I went to visit my parents for Christmas.  Even though I didn’t have any gym access I still wanted to some exercise so I put together my own simple bodyweight routine which I will be outlining in a future post.  Surprisingly even though the weather was very cold I actually enjoyed doing this outdoor bodyweight workout.  So now I want to become more knowledgeable in this area and learn more bodyweight training exercises.  I will also be posting about this topic as I learn.

3) TO DO MORE RUNNING:- I used to be quite good at long distance running in my school days.    However, since school I’ve been on and off with my running.  This year I want to get more consistent with it.  I think that by doing more bodyweight training this will help as I can build running into my routine.

4) TO ENTER A 10K RUN:- Hopefully as I do more running I will get to a level where I am good enough to be compete.  When I feel ready I plan to enter a local 10K.  Not only will this give me something to work towards but it will also add a competitive edge to my training.

5) TO BE MORE FLEXIBLE WITH MY TRAINING:- As I said above I like exercising in the gym.  However, I understand that this is not the only training method out there.  In fact there may be better methods out there that I neglect because I focus on gym work.  Therefore I want to mix up my workout routine and try new things each month.  This month I’m going to focus on bodyweight training then next month I will probably go back to the gym.  The month after I will look at something new.  By training this way it should improve my overall fitness and make my workouts more fun.

6) TO SLEEP MORE:- I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog that I always struggle to get enough sleep on week nights when I am working.  Over the Christmas holidays I’ve had more free time and managed to get a full nights sleep.  This has shown me the value of getting a good nights sleep.  So during 2009 I’m going to be making a continued effort to get enough sleep every day of the week.

So there you have it.  My fitness resolutions for 2009.  I think overall I’ve led a relatively healthy lifestyle over the past year but these resolutions should give me a bit more variety and hopefully improve my fitness even further.

Now I want to hear from you guys?  Have you got any fitness resolutions for the new year?  If so leave me a comment.