Turning September Motivation Into Success

I love it when September rolls around. Despite the shortening days signalling the end of Summer, it’s also like a second New Year’s Day for fitness. Refocus, routine and motivation are in the air. After all, we can only eat, drink and sunbathe so much before our goals start calling us back.

Unlike proper New Year, September has tons of good things going for it. There are more daylight hours. It’s not as cold. You’ve not eaten 57 mince pies and drunk 19 bottles of mulled wine. These next few months are prime time to get into a fitness routine, make huge inroads towards your goals and get those energy levels back up.

If you’ve got that fire in you now but are unsure where to start, we’ve got you covered.

Here’s our guide to riding the motivation wave for a ridiculously fit Autumn.

1. Make a plan

‍Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. If you lace up your running shoes and start hoofing it down the road as fast as you can, you probably won’t make it beyond the bottom of the street.

Likewise, you can go to the gym full of September motivational fire but no plan, wander around doing a few reps on a few machines, and wander back out feeling pretty ‘meh, maybe not this time.’

This fact doesn’t change as you get more experienced, either. I’ve been lifting weights for over 15 years, and if I start a workout with no plan, I have a rubbish session.Whatever your chosen exercise, have a detailed plan, and you’ll have a great session.

‍2. Start small

‍If you’ve been out of the game for a while, or it’s your first time properly exercising as an adult, start small, whatever your activity.

As a beginner or after a layoff, you’ll likely end up with some level of DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). This does get better with time and consistency, but you can limit how bad they’ll be the first few weeks by not pushing your body to the absolute limit.

‍3. Warm up properly

‍When I was 24 and generally more supple, I didn’t really need to warm up or stretch as much and it didn’t affect my training. At 34, if I don’t warm up properly, I feel tight, can’t maximise my session and often end up with a new niggle somewhere.

Start by getting the blood pumping with some light cardio – you can use machines in the gym or just get your body moving a bit at home with star jumps or high knees.

Follow this with some stretches, focusing on dynamic stretches (moving) and static stretches (held in one position) anywhere you feel particularly tight. You’ll perform better and massively reduce your chance of injury.

‍4. Protein up

‍Whatever your goals, increasing your exercise output increases your body’s protein requirements. Protein won’t do much to stop your DOMS, but it will help make the pain worth it. Protein helps your muscles recover from exercise, which is essential for fat loss, muscle gain, or any athletic goal.

If you’re training a lot (4-5+ per week at intensity), aim for 0.7-1g of protein per pound of body weight per day. If you’re doing a bit less, I think it’s reasonable to aim for 100g+ per day as a loose target to aid recovery. It’s easy to calculate that from looking at the nutritional information on foods that you eat.

Top tip: get a bag of protein if you’re finding you’re struggling to hit your number.

‍Through September and beyond

‍I love seeing the September motivation hit – the gyms start to fill up again and more people are out running.

If you want to be one of the people still doing this in October, November, December and right into next year: follow my advice above. Don’t be that person who goes hard for ten days straight, gets injured and gives up.