Every year, countless individuals — including many from within the U of A community — make new year’s resolutions focused on health and fitness. However, the spark of motivation that accompanies the start of a new year often causes people to push too hard, too fast, setting overly ambitious goals that are abandoned by the time February arrives.

Michael Kennedy, a Clinical Exercise Physiologist and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation, shares his expertise and tips for success if you’re looking to build a sustainable exercise routine that lasts all through the year.

Start by establishing your baseline 

Before you make an exercise plan, Kennedy explains, it’s important to assess where you’re starting from. A reasonable fitness goal for someone who is completely sedentary will be very different than for someone who already regularly incorporates physical activity into their daily routine. “Our bodies regulate how much capacity or function we have based on how much stress you impose,” explains Kennedy, which means different people will be able to handle a very different amount of intensity or overload dependent on what their activity has been like in the past.

One of the most accurate ways to figure out your baseline is through fitness testing, a service that the U of A offers through its Fitness Testing Services program, where Kennedy is director. It’s not just for elite athletes — regular individuals can sign up to have several health measures assessed, including cardiorespiratory or aerobic fitness, muscular strength, muscular endurance, flexibility, neuromuscular health and body composition.

“Testing gives you real evidence of your baseline fitness, and then through that feedback we can give you very clear recommendations on the intensity, duration, frequency and types of exercise that are appropriate for your training program.”

Follow the 15 per cent rule 

Kennedy covers several training principles in his Introduction to the Biological Aspects of Fitness to Health class, including the overload principle. Essentially, once you’ve figured out what your baseline is, you should avoid setting goals that have you exceeding it by more than 15 per cent. If you’re already running for 30 minutes a few times a week, for example, increase a few of your runs to 35 minutes per week.

For an individual who is completely sedentary, for example, “increasing to 10 or 15 minutes of physical activity a few times a week is a good start.” A training plan involving high-intensity, 90-minute fitness classes is a recipe for disaster, and likely injury.

And, Kennedy notes, you should keep the 15 per cent rule in mind when thinking of intensity as well. For example, if you regularly go for 30-minute walks, aiming to slowly increase the duration of your walks at the same pace is a reasonable and sustainable goal. Interested in a more high-intensity form of exercise for the new year, such as cross-country skiing or running? Don’t make the mistake of planning for the same duration as your lower-intensity workouts — instead, lower your amount of minutes as your body adjusts. 

“As I say to my students, intensity and duration are inversely related — as one goes up the other should go down.”

If you keep this in mind, your body will have the chance to adapt and keep pace with your resolution-fuelled enthusiasm.

Individualize your plan based on both capacity and interest

A common tip for those with fitness goals is to find a buddy to help motivate you to show up for your training sessions or exercise classes. While this may help with accountability, Kennedy warns that it can be a mistake in terms of sustainably reaching your health goals. “People are very social animals, so they want support,” he says, which often leads to people agreeing to accompany a friend to a workout class that’s too intense for them. “The training principle associated with that is individualization — what’s good for you is not necessarily good for me.”   

Kennedy also recommends finding activities you actually enjoy, rather than what you think might be the most effective, when designing your fitness plan. “Don’t do things that are good for you but that you absolutely hate — that’s not going to lead to long-term changes in your lifestyle and health-related fitness.”

Those who far prefer venturing outdoors over sweating in a gym can do so year-round, even in our northern climate; simply keep in mind that “cold is a major physical stressor,” says Kennedy.

“Spend the money and the time to dress appropriately, cover your mouth and cover your skin, because those two things can really change your nervous system and how it’s responding to your lung function and body temperature.”

Assess your schedule — and be realistic

While it may seem obvious, keep in mind that it’s also crucial to consider what your current weeks look like when planning a fitness program. “Any program is not worth the screen or paper it’s written on if it can’t fit into your actual life schedule,” says Kennedy. 

He recommends taking a look at an average week in your life and breaking it into two-hour blocks, spotting where there are windows of leisure time. Those are the opportunities to fit in physical activity — creating an idealistic plan and then trying to shoehorn it into your schedule where it simply doesn’t fit won’t lead to long-term success.

Know how to identify symptoms that you’re pushing too hard 

It’s normal to feel sore after a workout, especially if you’re pushing yourself, but how do you know when you may be taking things too far? According to Kennedy, a good rule of thumb is that if you’ve taken over-the-counter medications such as Advil or Tylenol to reduce subjective muscle soreness that is still lasting over 72 hours, “you’ve probably gone too hard.”

And don’t be tempted to ‘tough it out’ — “one of the things that can happen with severe muscle soreness is a leakage of proteins into the blood, and if too much leaks out this can be really hard on your kidneys.” 

Beyond muscle soreness, other physical signs of what Kennedy refers to as “overreaching” include a racing heart when you are trying to fall asleep, dry mouth, restless sleep, cravings, an increase in daytime drowsiness and mood disturbances (feeling grumpy or feeling flat).