Let's talk about a trend in the fitness community that is only becoming more prominent with the rise of social media (and social media influencers); The *insert number of days* fitness challenge. 

Maybe you’ve seen this before. “Finish this 30 day squat challenge to tone up your quads!” or “Get ripped abs in just 4 weeks!” or “Add this one exercise to your next workout for a better booty”.

Now, inherently these types of workouts and ideas aren’t bad. They’re getting people up and moving which is a great thing! The problem lies in the promise that these types of challenges sell. 

More often than not, doing 50 air squats a day isn’t going to get your legs “toned” and doing some more crunches and leg lifts probably won’t get your abs showing. 

These types of knock off programs love to guarantee results as long as you follow along step by step. And this is something that is hard to condone.

Not only does this create certain expectations for the person following the challenge, but when those expectations aren’t met it can be discouraging. This kind of relationship with exercise is difficult as it can quickly lead down the road of “Oh I’ve tried exercise. It didn’t work for me”

While some people may see a result from these workouts, albeit very minimal, these types of changes to the body won't repeat themselves if we simply run through the challenge a second, third or fourth time. 

One of the biggest components to actually progressing in our physical fitness is the idea of progressive overload. Now this essentially means that as we become more fit, whether it be better cardio, more muscle, more strength, we must increase the “stress” that we put on our body.

Now don’t mistake this stress for the type of stress you have when hearing the entire family is basing up in your house for the holidays.

By stress I mean the amount that we work out. That is the number of times we work out each week, the length of our workouts and how hard we are going in each workout.

As our body adapts, so does our exercise. If we’re doing the same workout week after week, we won’t see the progress that we really want.

And this statement is true for all types of exercise! We may typically hear about it for strength athletes and weightlifters, but it’s universal for distance runners, joggers, sprinters and even those just trying to generally boost their fitness. 

This idea of incremental pushes and consistently getting better over time is what connects all of the worlds greatest athletes.

I don’t want to paint the wrong picture here and say that ALL of these fitness challenges are bad and no one should be doing them. I do want people to be educated on the idea that in order to truly progress, we’re going to need to spice it up a little. 

If you find one of these challenges on social media, by all means give it a go. You could even add it to another exercise regiment that you’re following. But if it’s lacking in the results that it claims to provide, please don’t put the blame on exercise in general.

One of the most enjoyable parts of exercise is looking back on where you were a year ago and seeing how far you’ve come. But if we’re not pushing the boundaries it can be hard to reflect because we know that we haven't come as far as we could have. 

If this is you, don’t be discouraged! Use this as motivation for the next go around!

A coach or trainer can be pivotal here. Not only in helping push you to the next level, but in keeping track of your progress and showing you the progress you’ve made on your way.

You don’t need to train for 40 hours a week to move forward. Find a workout you enjoy, stick to it and push yourself. You’ll learn to love the variety provided in a truly individualized program vs “do these air squats for 10 minutes a day”.

Those fitness challenges have their place, but if we want to continue to grow and get better, we need to start looking elsewhere.