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Thursday, January 5, 2012

I wanted to take a moment to alert all the Speed Theory team members about a crazy phenomenon that is sweeping Calgary right now. This will be of particular importance to team members who are currently doing some cross training at a gym.

There I was at my facility and the entire place was packed, weights, treadmills, ellipticals, zumba class (never attended, but don't mind watching), spinning class, pool everywhere. And overwhelmingly with people I have never seen before (bear in mind I am at this gym minimum 3 times a week, year round).

At first I thought maybe Wednesday was a stat I had missed. The whole experience was puzzling so I decided to do some research. According to Wikipedia (so it must be factual) a lot of people make "New Year's Resolutions." Apparently vast numbers of people make plans to change their lives and set January 1st as an arbitrary start date. I guess something along the lines of "New Year, New You" (as some of you know I work in marketing, I have heard that slogan before, I now know what it really means).

Yes, I understand for you "locked in" focused athletes who train year round this may seem odd. But trust me it is going on.

While I wholeheartedly and with every fibre of my being support anyone making positive healthy changes in their life on as big or small as scale as they choose, sadly the research doesn't support the "resolution" thing. At least 35% of all resolutions will be broken by months end and only 23% of all resolutions are kept (roughly 80% failure rate).

So the bad news is your new friends at the gym won't be there long (as in don't count of forming a life long bond). The good news is in about 10 days you will notice the crowds thinning out and by mid February the gym will look just like it does the rest of the year.

Please let me know if this trend is happening at your gym.

PS my resolution is to see you at the AGM!

3 comments:

Slayer Dan said...

Michael, I have noticed the same thing at my facility, unfortunatley for me, the Resolution thing hits us with the semesters as well. On top of "New Year, New you" we have students that try to hang in there and see first midterms as the goal. After they fail the first midterms, they realize that all the manscaping and weights is for not becuase they are all on academic probation.
I think they should break down pools into swim lanes for serious, seriously trying, and seriously in cardiac arrest.

Some people are probably amazed that it only took me five days to get a "Ranting" post up. All that aside, I am all about making healthier lifestyle choices and committing to fitness. If anyone ever has a question about how us mere mortals train while listening to the entire Slayer library of music, let me know. The only true advice I can give is "Don't ride one full lap of the Stampede Road Race course as warm up."

Thomas said...

Hmm... I may have missed the memo about going to the gym before and/or after Jan 1.

Marilyn said...

Mike, did you bonk just before you wrote this post?

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