By Michael Morency
Full-time Personal Trainer

Starting any new journey always feels like a daunting idea connected to some big questions. Where do I start? How long is it going to take me to reach my goal? How do I know if I’m on the right path? Am I focusing on the right thing?

Starting your fitness or wellness journey is no different. Walking into a gym with little to no knowledge of what to do while you’re in there is a familiar uncomfortable feeling to everyone at the beginning.

This post will focus on three simple tips to help get you started:

1. Determine your WHY?
2. Set realistic goals
3. Enjoy the journey 

   1. DETERMINE YOUR WHY

Everybody’s reason to start going to the gym is different. It could be you have a dress that you want to fit into for a wedding in the summer, or you’re training for a triathlon or it could be as simple as you want to be able to take all of your groceries from the car to your house in one trip! Whatever that why is, define it, write it down and make sure it’s committed to memory. Try this exercise :

1. What is your why?
2. How important is it to you ?
3. Why now?
4. How would you feel if you don’t achieve it? 

It is important to determine what your driving force will be because that’s what will propel you to get up and go to the gym on days where it’s easy to find every excuse not to go.

2. SET REALISTIC GOALS/TAKE BABY STEPS

Setting goals that are easily quantifiable is a great way to manage if and how well you are sticking to your fitness plan. Make sure to have at least one or two weekly goals that you can easily abide by with your current schedule. Some examples :

1. Start walking 30 min a day
2. Go to the gym 3x a week
3. Do 100 pushups everyday
4. Run 5 miles every week 

Whatever your goals are make sure they are in align with your why from the above paragraph.

3. ENJOY THE JOURNEY

In every journey there are going to be some bumps in the road and potholes you’ll have to navigate, but be sure to not to let these veer you off-track for too long. If you couldn’t make it to the gym for a week, don’t allow that to manifest itself into you giving up and feeling like you ruined all of your progress. Regardless of how much time you take off, you will always be further along than where you were when started.

You will inevitably have those days where you don’t feel as motivated, where workouts wont seem as fun, progress may stall and that is when remembering your WHY and your specific, quantifiable GOALS will have to be the driving forces to keep you going.