Feeling Stuck in Your Fitness Quest?

Why not phone a friend?

At the beginning of the year, we offered some tips for keeping your resolutions on track. If you've done all the work to set yourself up for success by setting realistic goals, creating room for it in your schedule, making plans for managing motivation and discipline, and gathering the necessary resources, but are still struggling, you might benefit from a buddy.

Finding a friend to tackle challenging goals with can help you both in many ways. The most obvious benefit comes in the form of much needed accountability. If you both have the same general goal or interests and your schedules align, you might be able to do your chosen activity together, which can help keep you both feeling motivated and supported. If your schedules don't align, you can set a time to check in with each other and follow up. When one of you (inevitably) begins to struggle or lose motivation, the other can step in to provide a boost. Just knowing that someone else is counting on you can be enough to get you up off the couch on the days when it would be easier to stay put. If you can't muster the motivation to do it for yourself, you might be able to do it for someone else (and thus also for yourself).

You don't even need to be living in the same place, or be tackling the same challenges. Modern technology makes it easy to connect across long distances in a variety of ways. There are some apps out there that can help with this as well. Some allow users to track and compare athletic progress with others, some will help you turn your efforts into a game or story, some let you compete with your friends, and others let you work with your friends to complete virtual challenges for real world incentives. The important thing is that you're there for each other.

When choosing a partner, you'll want to make sure you're both equally serious about doing whatever it is you've decided to do. Whether you realize it or not, you'll be looking to each other for encouragement when things get tough. When that happens, you'll need to be able to trust each other to be there. If one of you drops out, the odds of the other one dropping out as well increase significantly. This may go without saying, but if you're taking something on in-person (such as committing to a class series, or tackling some sort of multi-day challenge, it'll be super important to make sure you and your partner get along well. If what you're doing requires a partner (such as acro), or has a ‘tandem’ or ‘team’ element, your ability to sync up with your partner and remain on the same page will be utterly critical. Especially if what you're doing involves a degree of physical or psychological duress, and even more so if you're stuck with each other under these conditions for multiple days.

‘Team chemistry’ matters a little less if you're each tackling different challenges, but you should still take care to choose a buddy who can give you the sorts of support you need. Some folks flourish with direct competition, some with ‘tough love’, and some with gentle encouragement. Reflect on what will work best for you and try to make sure you're paired up appropriately.