We’ve officially entered into the summer months.
We’re past Memorial Day.
Schools are letting out (or at least close enough where the kids and teachers are all mentally checked out).
Those trips are coming up.
And something else is too…
The daily ambiguity and lack of structure that usually carries you through everyday life.
Seriously. For some reason June and July always feels like November and December. It’s like the holiday season before we hit the second new year (beginning of school). This is, historically, a time of the year where people struggle with their health and fitness. We call this the summer slow down.
This struggle always leads to a pretty strong resurgence of gym attendance and inquiries for nutrition coaching in August and January/February.
But, what if we didn’t struggle through those holidays? Use one (or more) of the following ways to avoid the summer slow down.
- Hire A Nutrition Coach
There are a few reasons this is first on the list, and the reasons are pool parties, lake parties, fizzy and frothy beverages, cookouts, and long vacations.
Summer is SUCH a fun time of the year, but if your goal is to keep maintaining your current level of fitness and not move backwards with it, having some accountability and structure through these events can seriously help. This does NOT mean you’re trying to lose weight or “make progress” … it means you’re trying to stay where you’re at so when things do get back to structure, you hit the ground running.
Oftentimes people think nutrition coaching is only about losing weight. This simply isn’t true. Your nutrition coach is an unbiased person in your corner to help you find what’s valuable to you in this season of your life, and help you find success (whatever success looks like for YOU, not what some Instagram model thinks).
If you’re interested in hiring that coach, we have a hell of a coach here at Yellow Rose. Email [email protected] and she’ll get you started.
- Hire A Personal Trainer
Maybe you have your food in order and you don’t need help there, but you DO need help staying accountable and motivated to your exercising. A personal trainer is a great way to do that. While group class memberships and boutique studios do an awesome job of this for some, some people need that extra boost. What’s very popular these days (including at Yellow Rose) is to keep your group membership, but add in a once or twice a week personal training session. This gives you extra attention, accountability, and allows for more specialized work to be done just for you.
The one on one attention, personalized programming, and appointment scheduling at your convenience can really help keep your workouts on track for the summer!
Want to know more about personal training? Send me an email! [email protected]
- Take A 5-10 Day Planned Break
Wait, what? Seems a little counterintuitive… doesn’t it?
Not so fast. Scheduling time off is massively important. It’s very, VERY easy to fall into the guilt spiral of not getting in your workouts in the summertime. One day there’s no childcare so you have to stay home, another day your spouse is traveling, another day there’s just too many errands to do.
And they all seem to happen during a 1-3 week stretch which can seriously mess up our flow and routine.
A planned break can help us work through these. Instead of feeling overwhelmed or guilty about not getting in your workouts, acknowledge that there’s an upcoming period of time that things are going to get certified WILD in your life. In that time frame, establish a 5-10 day period where you will give yourself permission for ZERO fitness whatsoever. No scheduling classes. No running outside. No nothing.
It’s a planned break.
Guess what? Every person who has done this has stopped their break early, and realized that they can actually get their workouts in with a tiny bit more planning. This is an awesome exercise to help you, well, exercise! Do the planned break challenge and realize your weekly fitness is a lot more achievable than you realized.
- Change Up Your Workout Time
Sure, the mornings work best for you whenever you have kids to get off to school and 8AM meetings, but what about in the summertime when there’s no school and you have a more flexible work schedule? Seems to me like this is the perfect opportunity to put in your work calendar that you have a health and wellness committee meeting during our Noon class, or a client breakfast during our 9:30 class, or you have to duck out early for a networking event during our 4:30PM class.
Shoot, just call it a happy hour, and when they ask what bar you went to, you can call it “Bar-Bell.” (ehh? ehhhhh? anyone?)
- Keep The SAME Routine
If things are going well, why change it up? Keep the same routine. Keep rocking your nutrition, hitting your workouts, taking your rest days, and smashing that consistency.
But if you’re already reading this post and realizing that you’re not accomplishing the things you want to, maybe take an opportunity to use the summer time to change something up and see some more results.
Like the holidays in the wintertime, the summer tends to be a time when progress is put on the backburner. While we don’t have to consciously make progress during this time (in fact, I think it’s really healthy to be OK with not making progress), we definitely don’t want to lose our progress. Try some of these tips, and we’ll see you on the other side of summer ready to hit the ground running.
If you need any help, shoot me an email. [email protected]. I’m happy to get on a call with you and sort this out.
-Clark
