Health and Fitness Goals for 2022 (That Can Become Real Habits!)
A goal requires planning — make sure it’s attainable and that you have a clear vision on how to achieve it. The best part about these goals is that you don’t have to limit them to New Year’s resolutions. They can become habits you work toward every day.
Start Stretching More Often
The benefits are vast and the repercussions of failing to stretch can be dramatic. Do yourself a favor and always stretch before and after a workout. This will promote a healthy cooldown, improve flexibility, and reduce next-day aches. Failure to stretch can lead to injures and muscle damage.
Personal trainers know that flexibility is a vital health-related component of fitness closely linked to function and performance that should be integrated into all fitness programs.
In order for the body to move, muscles have to contract to make the movement occur. Contracting muscles are called agonists and would be known as prime movers. When an agonist contracts, shortens and produces movement, a reciprocating lengthening of its antagonist must also occur simultaneously.
Stretching is an extremely important practice to add to your daily routine to be on your way to better health. Even if you are not planning on exercising vigorously, it is still important to stretch in order to receive multiple benefits for your body and your mind.
- Decreases muscle stiffness and increases range of motion.
- May reduce your risk of injury.
- Helps relieve post-exercise aches and pains.
- Improves posture.
- It helps reduce or manage stress.
- Reduces muscular tension and enhances muscular relaxation.
- Improves mechanical efficiency and overall functional performance and movements.
- Prepares the body for the stress of exercise.
- Promotes circulation.
- Decreases the risk of low-back pain.
Add in Some HIIT
You may have heard about HIIT training because it is the big thing right now, and believe me when I say that it works and should absolutely be included in your fitness goals. The benefits include lower body fat, increased stamina, leaner muscles, and fantastic hormonal benefits.
When participating in such high-intensity workouts your body’s repair cycle goes into hyperdrive. This means in 24 hours after a HIIT workout your body is still burning calories and fat whereas, in steady-pace workouts, you may not.
HIIT workouts are also extremely cost-efficient because you need zero equipment! All you need is a little open space. HIIT workouts utilize your own body weight, so any workout that gets your heart rate up quickly such as plyometrics, high knees, and jumping jacks can be implemented into a HIIT workout. In fact, weights can actually make sometimes make the workout less effective because your main focus in HIIT is getting your heart rate up rather than toning a particular muscle group.
The Metabolic Conditioning Coach course is specifically designed to teach you the specific method of metabolic training. You will be giving the framework around this method of training and from there you will be able to put it into action.
Drink More Water
With any diet, the most important thing to remember is to stay hydrated. Drinking water will support your body with digestion, transporting nutrients to your bones and muscles, and even improving cognitive function. Dehydration can impair function, negatively affect performances and in severe cases, lead to a dangerous increase in body core temperature which can result in exertional heat illness. Loss of as little as 1% to 2% of body weight can begin to compromise physical function.
Eat More Greens
What you eat is the most important factor in a healthier living plan. It is important to ensure you are getting as many nutrients and vitamins from the food you are eating as possible. Juicing your vegetables will allow you to add countless veggies to your daily diet in a short amount of time with no cooking. If you own a blender, but no juicer, make vegetable-based smoothies instead. Start with a handful of spinach or kale and add any vegetables you have on hand.
Focus on dark, leafy greens, as they will provide you with a wide array of vitamins, minerals, nutrients and antioxidants—all of which you body needs! Enjoy a healthy salad at every meal. If pressed for time, start with bags of pre-washed greens, spinach or arugula. After that, any vegetable is fair game in a salad, as long as it’s one you like. Feel free to add peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, onions…any and all.
If you want to help clients with food, diet, weight management and improving the results of their fitness routines, the Fitness Nutrition Coach course is for you. You will learn about optimal nutrition, including proven techniques for increasing energy, optimal health and decreased dependence on medications. Instantly increase your job and career opportunities with this popular professional credential.
You can become a Certified Personal Fitness Chef and expand your current personal chef business, or add a new profit center for your fitness or wellness business. Many personal chefs cook and coach people in groups to help more people and earn more money per hour. Some chefs provide weekly meal prep service for health-minded customers and athletes.
Get More Sleep
For many, getting a solid night’s sleep is as elusive as winning the lottery. Getting too little sleep is so common that it’s become almost a badge of honor to get through each day with sleep deprivation. Even if you feel like you can function on little sleep, it’s actually debilitating, if not dangerous, to a person’s health and mental faculties.
When you are deprived of sleep, you make it next to impossible to achieve your health and fitness goals. Lack of sleep can increase stress hormones in your body, and over time these can lead to inflammation and chronic diseases. Make sleep a priority to let your body heal and rejuvenate.
If you have to commit to one change for improving your sleep for the New Year: wake up at the same time every day, 7 days per week (if that’s a deal-breaker on weekends, at least make it within an hour).
Waking up at the same time every day stabilizes and strengthens your circadian rhythm so that your body knows not only the time when you are supposed to awaken but also the time you are supposed to fall asleep.
When you become a Certified Sleep Science Coach, you will learn how to help your clients dramatically enhance their metabolism, memory, creativity, immune function, hormone balance, hunger management, disease prevention, sports performance, accident avoidance, memory, reaction time, good judgement, surgery recovery, happiness and over 100 additional functions and behaviors.
Getting Started
Check out what it takes to start a career in personal fitness training. This is your most affordable and fastest way to become a highly qualified personal trainer.
Is your recertification coming up? Learn more about earning your CEU credits. You can find the full list of CEU courses here.
If you are ready to start your online personal training or coaching business, don’t forget to learn more about our online coaching course. You will also really enjoy this very comprehensive training course called Online Expert Empire.
There is always something exciting about earning a new training or coaching certification and applying that new knowledge of how you train your clients. This also helps you hit the reset button.
NESTA and Spencer Institute coaching programs are open to anyone with a desire to learn and help others. There are no prerequisites.
That’s it for now.
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