Chris Judd: How to make fitness resolutions (and stick to them)

Chris Judd talks us through setting realistic (and manageable) exercise goals and shares his tips for hitting reset when you veer off track.

Fitness is all about outcomes. The first thing to do is come up with a broad goal – the thing you want to get out of your exercise – so you can home in on the right activities and routines that’ll help you achieve it. For example, if your long-term goal is weight loss, it might be good to set up a routine that includes both cardio and strength/resistance training. This could include a balance of things like running and swimming with weight exercises like deadlifts and barbell lunges.

It’s also good to consider broad fitness KPIs. What do you want to see yourself doing in the long run? This might be “I want to do a 10-kilometre run in 50 minutes” or “I want to bench press 90 per cent of my body weight”. These are the things you strive towards and hope to achieve later down the track, after a few months or even a year. (After you’ve hit your first KPIs, you’ll come up with new ones.)

Overall outcomes are important. They give us something to work for and establish why we want to get fit in the first place. But one of the most common fitness pitfalls I see is when people fixate on the big picture and forget about how they’ll get there. This is the difference between saying, “I want to lose a whole bunch of weight,” and telling yourself, “I want to lose 2 per cent body fat by the end of this month.”

As you do with other projects in your life, break down your long-term goal into manageable short-term actions. Fitness is process-based, and success is all about how well you’re responding to your current regime. So set up tasks that will help you move forward in a sustainable way and won’t overwhelm you. In other words, don’t bite off more than you can chew. And measure your progress in increments – running slightly longer, lifting slightly more, enduring slightly more with less effort each session.

In terms of exercise routines, you’re more likely to stick to it if it’s fun. I found a sport that I love and made it my job, so in many ways I got lucky. But that doesn’t mean you have to be a professional athlete to enjoy fitness. Play around with different activities until you find ones that jell. You might find the pool is more inviting than a treadmill, or that free weights work better with your body than weight machines.

Lifestyle is also important when establishing a sustainable fitness routine. Of course, if you have kids and a demanding job, you’ll need to factor in the unexpected. But it’s never any use saying, “I’ll come home from work, say a quick hello to the family, and then maybe exercise for an hour.” Your days are full of routine – getting out of bed, taking a shower, brushing your teeth. Look at exercise with the same mindset: it’s an everyday activity that you should file under ‘essential’, even if it’s three or four workouts a week. If you don’t have a concrete plan to exercise, you’re setting yourself up to fail.

When it comes to achieving fitness goals, you also need to be well rested. This might seem like a no-brainer, but amazingly around 40 per cent of Australians aren't getting enough sleep. A solid sleep routine – which largely come down to going to bed and waking up at the same time every day – gives you the energy to work out and the structure to keep at it.

People tend to beat themselves up when they fall out of routine. But shame leads to defeatism, which only fuels the slump. The way to push through these moments – which could be a result of anything from a life crisis to general burnout – is to simply get going again.

Nothing’s perfect, nothing ever will be. Acknowledge when you’re not hitting your targets, think about the reasons why, forgive yourself for veering off the path, and get back to it. There’s never any shame in hitting the reset button.

Former Australian Rules footballer Chris Judd is familiar with how to get your heart rate up and push yourself physically. Twice winner of the prestigious Brownlow Medal, Chris is an honoured sportsman and father to four children, Oscar, Billie, Tom and Darcy. The information in this article is general information only and is not intended as medical, health, nutritional or other advice. You should obtain professional advice from a medical or health practitioner in relation to your own personal circumstances.