January is sure to mark the start of new fitness plans for lots of people. As the month rolls on, it tends to mark the end of a lot of them too.
If you want to stick with your new year’s exercise resolutions, you need to make your goals realistic and sustainable, says expert trainer Thibo David. He’s trusted by the likes of singer Harry Styles, actor Chris Pine and several professional athletes to help them hit their health and fitness goals. So if there’s someone who can set you on the right track for 2024, it’s him.
Below, David details the three biggest mistakes he sees people making at the start of their exercise endeavors and offers tips on how to avoid them.
1. Not being aware of your limitations
(Image credit: Getty Images)
If you set yourself the goal of waking up at 5am everyday for a workout, but find yourself regularly hitting the snooze button, then it might be time to scale back your ambitions.
“People make the mistake of jumping straight into a routine that they’ve seen somewhere—and they’ll stick to it for a bit—but very quickly the body breaks down because the machine hasn’t been built properly,” says David.
Instead of challenging yourself with a punishing new regime, he suggests that you build foundational fitness first. Start with long walks, gentle jogs or steady-paced cycling sessions.
This will help you build up your aerobic capacity, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during exercise. Boosting your aerobic capacity improves your cardio fitness and also prepares your body for more intense activities down the line.
When you first start working out, David says these slow and steady efforts should make up 80-90% of your training. After a few weeks of this, you can start introducing more demanding exercise like HIIT and weighted circuits.
The longer aerobic capacity work should still make up the bulk of your training to maintain your base fitness and help you recover—David suggests a 60:40 ratio going forward.
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