Summer is just around the corner, and if you’re starting to regret not sticking to your New Year’s resolution of getting fit, don’t worry! It’s not too late to start. In this guide, we’ll explore how to find a fitness challenge that will help you stick to your goals and get ready for summer. We’ll provide tips for developing a healthy mindset. Fitness is about feeling good, not fitting into a swimsuit. It’s not too late to start taking steps that will improve your overall health and fitness this summer. We took all of this into consideration to create an April fitness challenge.
Finding the Right Fitness Challenge
The key to sticking with a fitness challenge is finding the right one for you. Consider your fitness level, interests, goals, and budget. You’ll find a ton of free guides and challenges to follow! For example, we were looking for quick workouts that took strength, cardio, and mobility into consideration, like the Women’s Health Summer Workout Challenge from 2021 where each workout takes a maximum of 30 minutes to complete. We also looked for challenges that provide structure and guidance. We liked the Muscle and Strength 6-Week Summer Workout Challenge because it provides a PDF guide with videos explaining all of their suggested exercises.
A challenge requires some group participation to have a real impact. For this reason, a group fitness environment can be a great place to look. If you want the freedom to follow your individualized schedule, or if you need motivation but want to do personalized workouts, free apps like FytFeed can help you find activity challenges and community support that fit your schedule and allow you to customize your activity.
Setting Goals and Tracking Progress
Setting realistic goals is crucial to staying motivated and selecting the right fitness challenge. Create a specific, action-based goal that you can work towards, and use apps or fitness trackers to track your progress and celebrate milestones along the way.
Our approach involves setting action-based goals. While outcome-based goals are important and can lead to excellent long-term achievements, smaller action-based goals are great for keeping a positive mindset and making progress. For example, rather than focusing on a long-term outcome-based goal, like losing 15 pounds, we focus our challenges on action-based goals, like performing 160 minutes of moderate physical activity each week. We focus on things we have (almost) full control over, and we believe that we are collectively much more likely to keep a positive and motivated mindset throughout the process. By setting action-based goals, we can also track and celebrate our achievements more easily!
Developing a Healthy Mindset
Fitness is about feeling good and being healthy, not about conforming to a certain standard. Focus on how your body feels and the positive changes you’re making to your overall lifestyle. Practice self-care and listen to your body by taking rest days when you need them. We build our challenges to include rest days and mindset practices because these are often overlooked and have a huge impact on our successful fitness journeys. When looking at the right fitness challenge for you, we recommend considering how you think the challenge will impact your overall mindset and mental health.
Staying Motivated
Staying motivated can be challenging, but there are ways to keep yourself on track. Find a workout buddy or accountability partner or join an online fitness community. Community is another critical aspect to a successful fitness challenge. By working toward a goal with at least one other person or in a group, you will become more invested in the cause. This will help you make a transition from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation, which is ultimately what helps us on the path to lifestyle change.
Reward yourself for reaching milestones. You could seek out challenges that come with rewards, or you could come up with your own reward system. Rewards don’t have to be fancy. In fact, small, regular rewards can help you transition the entire fitness challenge process into a regular and sustainable part of life.
And remember, it’s okay to have setbacks; just get back on track and keep moving forward.
Bringing it all Together
Improving your health and fitness for summer is possible with the right mindset and a good fitness challenge. Use the tips in this guide to find the right fitness challenge for you, set realistic goals, and develop a healthy mindset. Remember to focus on feeling good and taking care of your body and celebrate your progress along the way. With personal commitment and community support, you can achieve your fitness goals and feel confident and healthy this summer. If you want some extra help, we took all of this into consideration to create our Summer Shape-Up Challenge, which can be found for free in the FytFeed app.
