New Year’s fitness resolutions turn to failures

Watch above: Two months after the New Year’s rush began at gyms across Saskatoon, we check in to see if attendance is still up. As Calvin To found out, many were not as motivated to continue as they had hoped.

SASKATOON – Gyms around Saskatoon are beginning to see declining attendance levels, two months after the New Year’s rush.

“The trend usually is, everyone comes in the first week of the new year, signs up for their gym membership, signs up for personal training and classes, and then in a couple months it definitely dies down,” says Jessica Pokoyoway, a personal trainer at Motion Fitness.

Year after year, she sees the same pattern. Pokoyoway’s gym only retains about 35 per cent of people who sign up in January.

So why is it that almost two-thirds of people don’t follow through with their fitness resolutions? Some psychologists chalk it up to peer pressure.

“New Year’s resolutions have been such a long standing part of our culture and society and it’s kind of expected, ‘What are you going to do, come the new year?’,” says Danielle McFadyen, a registered psychologist in Saskatoon.

“So I think a lot of people throw out these ideas and have these big goals, but they don’t necessarily buy into it or really have the intentions of truly following through.”

She recommends people set their workout goals when they are fully committed, instead of waiting for an arbitrary time of year.

READ MORE: How to make healthy New Year’s resolutions that stick

It’s a lesson body builders know all too well. Jason Roberts has been hitting the gym for 20 years and says baby steps are the key to success.

“You can’t look at the end of goal and say, ‘This is what I want to be, this is what I want to achieve,’ it doesn’t happen like that. You have to do it little by little, day by day, and sooner or later you’ll get there,” says Roberts, a fitness fanatic who hasn’t missed a workout in months.

Pokoyoway says trainees should make goals that are realistic and achievable.

“Maybe set a goal starting to come three to five times a week instead of, ‘I’m going to come seven days a week for two hours every single day’,” she says, adding that people who make unrealistic goals that are beyond their capabilities are only dooming themselves to failure.