It’s that time of the year again - the New Year's fitness buzz. A time where motivation is high, new workout plans are made, gym bags make a return, and everything feels full of possibility!
And yet, for many people, this momentum is short-lived.
By mid-February, routines can start to slip. Sessions get skipped. Motivation fades. The resolution quietly dissolves, something often accompanied by frustration or guilt.
If that sounds at all familiar, it’s firstly worth saying this upfront: it’s not a personal failure. In most cases, it’s a structural one.
It might sound strange, but having a long term and consistent fitness routine isn’t solely about having the most ‘willpower’, or forcing yourself to run just because it’s ‘new year, new me’, it’s about building an individual routine that works for you and sets you up in the best position to hit your workout goals in the long term.
To make things easier, we’ve put together this nifty guide diving into the science of new year’s fitness, why traditional workout resolutions so often fall apart, and what genuinely helps when it comes to building habits that last for the long term.
Right, let’s get into it.
Why New Year’s fitness resolutions don’t succeed
Before exploring how you can set your fitness goals for the long term, it’s important to understand why so many fall short.
The main reason comes down to something psychologists call the “fresh start effect”.
This is a period that interrupts the calendar schedule (such as New Year's), creating a mental separation between the past and the future. Such a fresh start makes change - like the restarting of a fitness routine - mentally easier to overcome because the past feels neatly boxed away.
While this sounds good on paper, the problem is that motivation alone isn’t enough to sustain long-term behavioural change.
Many New Year’s fitness routines struggle to last because they often:
- Focus on outcomes instead of training plans and sustainable behaviours.
- Target instant change
- Focus on unrealistic fitness goals
Shall we run from the top?
Outcome-based targets
One pitfall people often find themselves in is setting a New Year’s fitness goal that is driven by outcome without proper planning.
Some examples might be:
All great targets to strive for, yet without a training plan or strategy to achieve them, they can quickly feel unattainable and therefore interest drops off.
This makes creating and sticking to a new year’s exercise plan key to achieving your goals, asking: what do you want to achieve? What steps are you going to take to achieve them? And how will you measure your progress?
Too much change and unattainable fitness goals
With the fresh start effect, it can feel productive to try and overhaul all your health practices. A new training plan. A stricter diet. Earlier mornings. Fewer social plans. Better sleep. More productivity.
Individually, these changes are all positive (we’ve spoken about the positive effects of many in the past ourselves). Making all these large life changes in a short space of time, however, can lead to something called ‘cognitive overload’.
Each new habit requires attention, decision-making, and self-control, leading to decision fatigue buildup and increasing the likelihood that behaviours will be dropped rather than maintained.
Sustainable change tends to work the opposite way. Small, manageable shifts layered gradually over time allow habits to stabilise before new ones are added. Instead of replacing your entire lifestyle in January, long-term routines are built by choosing one or two priorities, letting them settle, and then building from there.
Unrealistic fitness goals
Another common reason why new year workout plans don’t work is that the end goals being set aren’t realistic to achieve in the time frame given.
Training every day. Completely overhauling diet. Expecting visible results within weeks are just a few sure-fire ways to see your fitness plans gone by the end of January.
This is because when progress isn’t immediately visible, individual motivation drops.
Any missed sessions start to feel like failure, and the routine becomes something to avoid rather than return to. This can lead to a plateau in motivation and a workout rut that sees you lose all motivation to continue your fitness plan.
The best way to avoid this?
Tailor your New Year’s workout plan to what is realistic for you to achieve. Remember, everyone is different and you should avoid trying to replicate someone’s workout plan who is at a much different point in their journey.
What helps you stick to a fitness routine
So now we’ve covered the pitfalls faced with New Year's resolutions, what are some of the ways that you can set yourself up for success going into 2026?
Starting your workouts small
It might sound a little backward, but maintaining a new year’s fitness routine is all about incremental improvements - starting small and building up to ambitious fitness goals.
In essence, try to make your workouts feel manageable from the outset.
This removes much of the physical and mental friction caused by sharp changes and removes the possibility of overtraining syndrome - something that can lead to both physical and mental fatigue. Instead of asking your body and mind to adapt to a dramatic shift all at once, you allow both to adjust gradually - which is exactly how sustainable habits are formed.
Personal, not performative goals
A common reason New Year's fitness routines fall apart is that the goal itself was never truly personal.
Many resolutions are shaped - often unconsciously - by external pressures: how we think we should look, what others are doing, or what feels ‘socially impressive’. These goals can create a strong initial push, but they rarely provide enough depth to sustain effort in the long term.
Personal goals, by contrast, are rooted in lived experience. They’re connected to how you want to feel day-to-day, not how you want to appear to others. Wanting more stable energy through the afternoon, fewer aches and pains, better sleep, or improved resilience during stressful periods may not sound as dramatic as a body transformation, but they’re far more motivating over time.
This is supported by behavioural research showing that exercise routines rooted in intrinsic motivation - feeling better, moving more easily, managing stress - are significantly more likely to be maintained long-term than goals shaped by appearance or external pressure.
These outcomes are felt quickly and repeatedly, which reinforces the habit itself.
Fitting fitness into your routine
Again, seems counterintuitive, but a workout routine that only works under perfect conditions won’t survive beyond January.
You can’t change things like long workdays, family responsibilities, travel, and low-energy weeks, and you shouldn’t try to. Your regular workout routine should function around these things.
The key here is that fitness is flexible. It allows for shorter sessions, longer sessions, varied training styles, and a broader definition of movement that can all be tailored to your day-to-day routine. Your also not limited by location, you could workout at home, at the gym, with groups, whatever fits into your routine.
The role of recovery in New Year’s fitness
One of the most overlooked reasons people struggle to stick to New Year’s fitness routines is actually physical and mental fatigue.
While this is to be expected to some extent - and you can control fatigue by following the above tips - you also need to consider the importance of effective recovery and how you are fuelling your body between workouts. Just some of the ways you can improve recovery are:
Sleep quality: Quality sleep is when the body actually recovers, repairs tissue, and resets energy levels for the next day. Without it, even light training can start to feel disproportionately demanding.
Effective hydration: Staying properly hydrated helps support circulation, muscle function, and focus, making both workouts and recovery feel smoother and more manageable.
Complete nutrition: Providing the body with enough protein, carbohydrates, fats, and micronutrients gives it the building blocks it needs to repair, adapt, and maintain steady energy over time. It’s also worth considering tailored nutrition-focused supplementation such as Innermost’s The Recover Capsules and The Hydrate Blend.
Reframing New Year fitness: from resolution to routine
An effective mindset shift you can make this new year is moving away from the idea of a “resolution” and towards a routine.
Resolutions are often outcome-focused - lose weight, build muscle, run faster. Routines are behaviour-focused - train three times a week, walk daily, prioritise recovery.
This reframing is also key when thinking about how to stick to your New Year’s fitness resolution. Instead of asking, “Am I seeing results yet?”, the more useful question becomes, “Can I repeat this next week?”
Remember, the most effective fitness routines aren’t created in January - they’re carried through February, March, and beyond.
References
- Dai, H., Milkman K.L., Riis,J. (2013).The Fresh Start Effect: Temporal Landmarks Motivate Aspirational Behavior. Management Science. 60 (10), 2563-2582. Click here.
- Cezar, B., Macada, A. (2023). Cognitive Overload, Anxiety, Cognitive Fatigue, Avoidance Behavior and Data Literacy in Big Data environments. Information Processing & Management. 60 (6). Click here.
- Ntoumanis, N., Healy, L. et.al. (2014). Self-Regulatory Responses to Unattainable Goals: The Role of Goal Motives. 13 (5), 594-612. Click here.
- Cleveland Clinic. Overtraining Syndrome. Click here.
- Sebire,S., Standage, M., Vansteenkiste,M. (2011). Predicting objectively assessed physical activity from the content and regulation of exercise goals: evidence for a mediational model. 33 (2), 175-197. Click here.
