How To Stick To Your New Year’s Fitness Resolutions
Every year, millions of Brits make New Year resolutions, and most vow to improve their health & fitness. If one thing is certain, your gym will be a lot busier in January with the fitness boom taking over.
It’s easy to start your year expecting big things whilst telling yourself that you mean it this year and this is a brand new you but those bigger goals are sometimes too broad even to know where to start. A gym subscription is a great place to start, but here are some tips for keeping going when everyone else stops. After all, summer bodies are made in winter!
In this guide, we’ll provide you with all the tips and tricks on sticking to your fitness goals in 2025 and highlight some common mistakes that see people throw in the towel. So, if you want to stay on track with your new year’s fitness goals, keep reading and let’s create a plan of action to help you get in the best shape of your life.
Contents
- 1. Set Your Goal
- 2. Make it SMART
- 3. Find activities you enjoy
- 4. Make a plan
- 5. Schedule rest days
- 6. Keep it positive
- 7. Reward yourself
1) Firstly, set your goal
Having a broad goal makes things more complicated than it needs to be.
If your goals are ‘to do more exercise’ or ‘improve my fitness, it is probably time to reassess and create a smaller goal with tangible steps that will help keep you motivated and stay on track.
What should be my 2025 fitness goals?
To help make your new goals a success, you need to break them down into bite-sized chunks. Make sure to ask yourself questions such as:
- Are you going to focus on cardio or strength training, or perhaps take a hybrid approach?
- Is there a particular body part you want to work on the most?
- What is my fitness level like already?
- Is there a type of exercise that I enjoy doing?
- Why do I want to exercise? (Maybe don’t think about this one for too long if you are not highly motivated)
Once you reach your smaller goal, you can make new ones. Seeing how your body changes will help you know where to go next. You’ll also feel more successful as you can tick off many smaller resolutions rather than feel like you’re constantly working towards something so far away.
2025 Fitness Goals
If you are looking for some inspiration for 2025 fitness goals, here are some you can steal:
- Exercise consistently: Commit to working out 3-5 times a week
- Daily steps: 10,000 steps a day.
- Flexibility and mobility: Spend 10-15 minutes a day stretching.
- Lift Heavier: Increase the weight of your lifts by 20%.
- Run a race: Train for a 5k, 10k, half marathon or full marathon.
- Lose Fat: Aim for a sustainable fat loss percentage.
- Learn a sport: Try a new sport like tennis, swimming or yoga.
2) Make your fitness goals SMART
SMART goals are a great way to achieve your goals. To set a SMART goal, it should be:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Timebound
What is an example of a SMART fitness goal?
An example of a SMART fitness goal would be: “I want to lose 5kg by March 31st by working out 4 times a week and eating balanced meals.” or “I want to complete a 5k race without stopping by February 18th by completing the Couch to 5k programme.”
It is important to make your fitness resolutions measurable; otherwise, you won’t be able to track your progress. Not tracking your progress is a sure fire way to give up, so make sure you have a way to track your exercise, nutrition, steps or whatever your goal is.
For example, if you’re going to improve your diet, you may be thinking about cutting back on certain food groups or types of drinks, but it’s best not to go cold turkey like you may be planning to.
Exercise
If you plan on starting your fitness journey in the gym, give yourself a realistically achievable target that you can stick to weekly.
Do you want to measure calories burned, time spent in the gym or something else? Ensure you have a record of your daily activities to look back at your progress. There are a lot of great paid and free fitness apps you can use to track your goals; if you would like some recommendations, read our blog, ‘The Best Fitness Apps To Help You Stay Fit in 2025’.
Best Fitness Apps to Keep You on Track in 2025
3) Find activities you enjoy
Choose workouts or sports that you genuinely enjoy doing. This will make it so much easier for you to stick to your goal. If you already know what you enjoy when it comes to fitness, create your goals around this.
For example, if you love the outdoors, create goals centred around hiking.
If you don’t know what you like to do, your goal could be to find out! Set the goal to try 5 different sports by a certain date, which will help you stay motivated and keep your exercise regime fresh and exciting.
4) Make a plan
So, you’ve broken your resolution down to a manageable goal, you’ve thought about how to make it measurable and achievable, and now, you’re looking for an action plan to get there.
It’s time to make a plan.
If you find a routine or plan you want to try online, make sure you save it so it is easily accessible for when you head into the gym. It is worth noting down the exercises within the plan with the weight you used as this will give you a benchmark for the next time you try it.
5) Schedule rest days
At the start of the year, you will be motivated to smash your fitness goals; this comes with positives and negatives. The advantage of being motivated is that you will have a drive to succeed; the drawback is that you will probably be aching from head to toe.
This is why you should schedule rest days into your regime. Studies show that rest days are important for recovery and muscle repair. If you still want to exercise on rest days, you can do so with an active rest day.
What are some active rest day activities?
- Walking
- Cycling
- Slow jog
- Yoga
- Swimming
- Rowing
- Rock climbing
- Dancing
6) Keep it positive
A good attitude is the best way to keep yourself motivated. If you struggle with staying motivated, there are a few ways to stay on track:
Get support from a friend
You can also ask for help and support from your loved ones. It’s been statistically proven that exercising with a friend or partner helps with how long and how often you spend exercising. So, if you know someone who already goes to the gym or has the same fitness goals, you could train together. It’s common for people to lose their positive mindset once things get hard (or sore, in this case), but keep reminding yourself of why you’re doing what you’re doing.
Follow fitness influencers
Another way to stay motivated is to follow fitness influencers on social media. Finding a positive role model with a success story will give you a boost of positivity on your feed and help you stay on track. Try and find a fitness influencer, sports person or role model that you connect with and you find relatable.
Create a vision board
A vision board is a great way to visualise what a successful goal can look like. This doesn’t have to be a physical board; you can create a Pinterest board with ideas of what you want to achieve as a reminder.
Make a playlist that gets you pumped
For those days when you really don’t want to go to the gym, have a playlist ready that will get you pumped and raring to go. Whether it is a list of old-school bangers, some techno tunes or even epic orchestral music, it is worth creating a playlist to get you through the gym doors.
7) Reward yourself
When you achieve your milestones or goals, make sure you celebrate them. It is important to mark your progress, and rewarding yourself can help you stay motivated.
Pick a reward that aligns with your goals, this could be:
- A sports massage
- A new pair of running shoes
- A relaxing activity
- New workout gear
Start your fitness journey with FitKit’s Fit in 30
If you’re still unsure where to start, we’ve launched our Fit in 30 Challenge, which you can do at home or in the gym with basic equipment and adjust to fit your fitness level. The best thing about it? Once you’re done, you can start all over again, making it more difficult as you go.
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