The 10% Rule- How to maximise your chance of achieving your New Years Goal!!

Have you jumped into your new year resolutions a bit too enthusiastically? I know I have – I can’t lift my arms up without (internally) groaning at the moment!

If your goals include exercise: it is fantastic that you want to move more and improve your fitness – in doing this you will reduce your risk of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and chronic pain, by up to 45% - go you!

Many of us jump into these new exercise plans with perhaps a bit too much vigour (example a) – me!), which then leads to falling off the band wagon due to a multitude of reasons: too much of a time commitment or worse – injury.

Starting small, with no more than a 10% increase per week (from what you were doing last week) will reduce risk of injury by 4 fold, and is much much more easy to maintain in the long run than a big change in lifestyle.

An increase in 10% may be the distance or time walked, it may be an increase in pace, an increase in weight lifted or adding in an extra set. Only increasing by small increments gives your body a chance to adapt to the exercise, which will in turn help build your resilience to injury. Increasing by more than 10% places you at increased risk, and eventually takes its toll in the form of tendonitis or knee/shoulder/back pain.

Any change in lifestyle should also start small – it is mentally more achievable, and easier to maintain, leading to long term commitment. Try to only change one thing at a time, this will take 21 days of consistency to become an ingrained habit, then you won’t have to push yourself to do it and  you can move onto the next goal.

Start small, gradually build up and work for consistency as this is what will help you finally achieve the goal you are striving for.

(For me – 10 chin-ups 😉)

Please contact us if you would like help managing any change in exercise levels, if you want to know more, or if you are returning to exercise following an injury/illness/prolonged period of inactivity – we can help reduce risk of injury even more!

Brittany Cooke