The first step is the most important

This is the time of year that many people start working on their resolutions to get back into shape, get into shape in the first place, or any myriad of goals related to a renewed determination to spend time getting fit.

However, it can be a bit daunting when you realize how much effort you have ahead of you. The longer your training plan has lapsed, the more it seems like you have a lot of work ahead of you. Even if you just missed a week or two due to the holidays, it might seem like a long road back.

The good news is that it really isn’t necessary to get everything done immediately. As they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Have patience. As long as you are back to making progress (rather than putting off getting started), you should be doing fine. The first step will take you a lot further than making grand plans to make crazy progress as soon as you get around to starting.

It doesn’t matter if you are training to run a marathon, preparing to fight in a tournament, or just trying to get more energy by boosting your metabolism with exercise. The first step is always the same – get out there. Even if you have some time-critical goals (such as a fixed date that a race is to be run), you aren’t making any progress until you get back to training.

Keeping involved

The more help you give yourself to keep on track, the more likely you are to succeed. There are many things that you can do to help keep yourself moving, such as:

• Create a schedule – as you build (or get back to) a routine, keeping to a regular schedule will help you build habits that will keep you training automatically rather than having to make a choice every day to train.

• Be Social – having a network of people who will hold you accountable (or notice when you are not training) can be a great motivator to keep you engaged. This can be the group of people you train with, or a social network where you log your training results, or even just family members that you related your successes to. Having someone else involved in your training plan can be a very important safeguard against letting things slip when you get busy.

• Use technology to keep a schedule – Once you have a habit ingrained, you might remember automatically when it’s time to train. Until then, a calendar or reminder program can provide an amazing amount of encouragement (or annoying reminders) to keep you on track.

• Use technology in other ways – Even beyond scheduling there are a lot of ways to use technology to help you train. From accessing new information, to enabling you to stay on track even when you are away from your normal routing (traveling for work, staying at home all day to watch kids or repairmen, etc.). The more you can make your training routine event-proof and not interruptable, the more you can stay on track when unexpected things happen.

We’ll be releasing an Android phone app soon that will help you with all of the above. Keep watching for it, or for advance notice sign up to the mailing list.  We’ll only send important updates to the mailing list.

Be sure to check out our Toolbox section for links and information on tools that you can use. We’re constantly adding to that to give you extra resources to help you train.

So now you know that the first step is the most important one, and have some additional knowledge on how to stay moving. The only thing to do now is take that first step. Get to it today!