The Fitness Benefits of Working Out with a Friend

From learning new moves to friendly competition, here's how a friend could boost your progressBy Diana Gerstacker

You rely on your friends for everything—from dating advice to support during the toughest times—so when it comes to fitness, why are you going it alone?

Maybe you enjoy an occasional long run by yourself or perhaps you like cycling solo, but that doesn’t mean there’s no room for friends in your routine. In fact, if you’re trying to make exercise a habit or you’re hoping to hit a specific goal, a friend could be a big help.
Friends provide a kind of motivation and competition that you just can’t get when you’re exercising alone. Workout partners keep you accountable by meeting you at the gym after a long day and they push you to work harder so you can match their effort. Having a fit friend helps keep you on track and that means reaching your goals quicker.
If you’ve always been a solo gym-goer, maybe it’s time to find a friend for your workouts. We’ve outlined the fitness benefits of working out with a friend and some of them just might surprise you.

Accountability
You’re far more likely to actually workout when (1) you’re forced to schedule it ahead of timeand (2) cancelling means inconveniencing a friend. Making concrete plans with a friend means you’ll be far less likely to cancel in favor of the couch and after a few weeks of working out together your routine will be second nature.

Motivation
In addition to keeping you accountable, friends can provide an extra boost of motivation when it gets tough. Everyone has those days when they just don’t feel like going to the gym and those times when they want to call it quits, friends can offer encouragement to keep you going. Just be sure to return the favor.

Learn More Moves
Even the most dedicated gym rat doesn’t know it all, there’s always room for improvement. Friends can teach you new exercises or circuits and they can point out things you might be doing wrong. Get into a routine with a friend and finally learn how to crush that pistol squat.

Two-Person Exercises
On top of learning some new solo exercises, a partner can help you broaden the scope of what you can do. In other words, you can do exercises that require two people. Think crunches with a medicine ball pass or partner push-ups with a shoulder tap—the possibilities are practically endless.

Competition
If your workout partner is a bit fitter, faster or stronger than you are, you might be in luck. According to a study by Kansas State University, people who worked out with someone they perceived as better “increased their intensity and workout time by as much as 200 percent.” How’s that for a little friendly competition?

Avoid the Rut
Working out alone can leave you stuck in the same routine with the same moves, but when you partner up there are more options. Not only can a partner point out some new exercises, but they can let you know when a particular routine is getting stale and then help you switch it up.

Affordable Personal Training
Maybe you’ve been thinking about hiring a personal trainer but just don’t have room in your budget for a series of solo sessions; a friend might be able to help. Hiring a personal trainer for the both of you will lighten your individual cost and as long as you and your friend are at similar fitness levels with related goals, the session should be just as beneficial as a one-on-one appointment.

Avoid Injury
Working out with a friend means you have a built in spotter. Your buddy can count reps, check your form and help you make adjustments before they become painful mistakes.

Have More Fun
Those who have hit the gym with friends know that it’s usually more enjoyable than going alone and several studies have reached that conclusion too. One study in particular surveyed 117 people using their phones to ask what they were doing, who they were with, where they were, how they were feeling and more. The results suggest that people enjoy physical activity more when they’re with their friends.

Get Better Results
When you take into account all the listed benefits that friends bring to your workout routine, it’s not hard to see that you’ll be able to reach your goals more quickly. The added accountability, competition and fun that friends bring to exercise will keep you motivated.

Reprinted from http://www.theactivetimes.com/

Why 80 Percent of New Year's Resolutions Fail

Why is it that with such good intentions, getting fit, losing weight and improving our lives seems so elusive?
By Joseph Luciani

Ever hear of holiday remorse? It's the guilt driven-response you have to holiday excess that becomes the catalyst for those New Year's resolutions and intentions. What happens is that we go through the holidays abandoning most – if not all – restraint, while indulging our bacchanalian impulses. Bellies full, we manage to sleep well at night clinging to the rationalization that, come the new year, we're going to lose the weight and get in shape. Yes, and I can show you a holiday road to hell paved with New Year's intentions.

Come the first of January, the hoards of enthusiastic resolutions-ers account for the swelling number of gym, yoga and Pilates memberships as the diet books fly off the book store shelves. By the second week of February, some 80 percent of those resolution-ers are back home with a new kind of remorse staring back at them in the mirror – the remorse of disappointment. Why is it that with such good intentions, getting fit, losing weight and improving our lives seems so elusive?

To answer this question, it's important to recognize that outside-in solutions such as dieting, joining gyms and so on are doomed to fail if, other than your well-intentioned resolve to change, you've done nothing to enhance your capacity to either sustain motivation or handle the inevitable stress and discomfort involved in change. Saying this differently: Unless you first change your mind, don't expect your health goals to materialize. As the saying goes, it's not the horse that draws the cart, it's the oats. It's not the gym, Pilates class or diet that will change you – it's your mind.

The unfortunate truth is that change, all change, entails some degree of emotional friction, which in turn generates a "heated state" we call stress. Whether you're feeling anxious, depressed, frustrated, fatigued, weak and out of control, or simply bored, emotional friction (stress) becomes the high-octane fuel of failure. When it comes to handling the stress involved in change, many well-adjusted, happy, overweight, out-of-shape people share the fundamental problem of self-sabotage.

What exactly is the resistance that sabotages our lives and our intentions? As complex and multifaceted as the answer to this query may be, one way or another it all boils down to self-discipline. Essentially, you build self-discipline by willfully enduring the transient discomfort of changing who and what you are. You're not born with self-discipline; you acquire it. Like a muscle, you need to develop your self-discipline muscle, one challenge at a time. Starting today, instead of reflexively feeling a need to minimize or escape the friction involved in change, recognize instead the need to endure it. Bottom line: Don't bail!

So before you focus on your biceps or belly fat, focus on training your brain with these five tips – and next year, you won't have to make a resolution:

1. Think small. Begin with small successes. Take a look at the habits that are holding you back in life. Find one that's simple, like, "When I finish this meal, I'm going to wash my dish." Make a contract with yourself that that dish must be washed. No ifs, ands or buts! Throughout the day, find simple challenges that you make happen. 

2. Build self-trust. Once you get used to making small things happen, begin to recognize and embrace the truth: What I say to myself is what I do. Remember, to cultivate a capacity for self-trust, you must succeed. In order to guarantee success, don't challenge yourself with a pledge that you're not sure you can handle. If, for example, you're not sure you'll stick with going to the gym five times a week, then don't promise yourself. Better to do the best you can than to fall short and wind up jeopardizing your growing capacity for believing in yourself. When it comes to building trust, it's better to lose the battle than the war. 

3. Invent challenges. Invent various challenges throughout the day to strengthen your ability to believe and to do. Don't allow yourself to procrastinate; make yourself finish your paperwork before turning on the TV; decide not to spend too much at the mall. These are all trust-muscle builders, and you should view them as you would an actual muscle. Just as you would do repetitions at the gym to develop a muscle, so too must you get your reps in each day. Like a muscle, the more you workout, the more your capacity for personal success will grow.

4. Cultivate optimism. No one's life is without negatives. The key is to train yourself to focus on the positives. Don't let insecurity suggest there are no positives. Positives may be eclipsed by a habit of pessimistic negativity, but keep looking: They're there. If you're a whiner or a complainer, make a determination to stop whining and complaining (to yourself and others). Pessimists are so used to being negative that they don't realize it's a habit. And they don't realize it's a choice.

5. Develop critical awareness. Living without self-awareness is like driving your car at night with the headlights off – technically, you can still drive, but you will eventually have a collision. With awareness, you shed light on your destructive, reflexive habits and thinking and on any self-sabotaging mind games at play. When it comes to self-sabotage, mindless capitulation to destructive impulses is your number one enemy.


Reprinted from US News & Health ReportA clinical psychologist in private practice for almost four decades, Joseph J. Luciani, Ph.D., is also the author of the international best-selling Self-Coaching series, which has been translated into 10 different languages. An in-demand speaker and expert, Dr. Joe is featured frequently in major media, including MSNBC, CNBC, Hallmark Channel, Discovery Channel, NPR, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Fitness, Health, Shape, and O, The Oprah Magazine. Dr. Joe resides in New Jersey with his wife of 44 years and, in his spare time, is an amateur paleontologist, astronomer, marathon runner, and practices yoga and meditation. Thin From Within will be released on January 1, 2016, and available in both paperback ($16.95) and e-book ($12.95) formats via Amazon. Learn more about Dr. Joe at Self-coaching.net and connect with him onFacebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

10 Ways to Make Your New Year's Resolutions Stick

10 ways to stay strong in the face of tempting cupcakes, pricey shoes, and the urge to hit the snooze button instead of the gym.

By Sarah Mahoney
There's an inevitable rhythm to January 1 at my house. I take down the tree, vacuum up pine needles, and start making my New Year's resolutions. The list usually looks like this: Lose weight. Swear off TV and saturated fat. Eat salads. Call Dad more. Write that novel. Floss. By midday I'm worn out, intermittently dozing in front of a football game and swiping my husband's million-calorie nachos.

It's not that I totally lack discipline. It's just that I don't sufficiently appreciate what's going on in my brain, explains Joseph Shrand, M.D., an instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. Self-restraint is a rational desire, which means it lives in the front of the brain, the section that's most recently evolved and most vulnerable to being overruled by survival instincts. Pleasure resides in the brain's most primitive part, which has spent millions of years learning to reward us with a deeply satisfying jolt of dopamine when we give in to these kinds of urges. And while that brain circuitry evolved to encourage life-prolonging desires like eating, says Dr. Shrand, we now get a rush from giving in to anything we want, whether it's an illicit drug, chocolate, or buying expensive purple peep-toe boots, even when the more evolved part of our brain tells us we'll quickly regret it.

So how do you help the rational (i.e., your New Year's resolutions) triumph over the pleasure-seeking? You need to outsmart it with these research-proven strategies.
1. Give It a Workout

I'd always thought of willpower as a steady, steely resolve that made some women triathletes and some (not my real name) couch-nappers. But it's more like a muscle, says Marvin D. Seppala, M.D., chief medical officer at Hazelden, the well-known addiction treatment center. That means the more we use it, the stronger it gets — and quickly. In an experiment at the University at Albany — State University of New York, researchers asked 122 smokers who were trying to quit to exert extra self-control for two weeks, either by avoiding sweets or by squeezing on a grip strengthener for as long as they could twice a day. In the following month, 27 percent of those who were diligent about practicing their self-control exercise successfully kicked their cigarette habit, compared with just 12 percent of volunteers who'd been given a task that didn't call for self-control.
2. Make One Change at a Time

Once you understand that you have only a limited amount of willpower, it's easy to understand why multiple resolutions aren't likely to work, says Ian Newby-Clark, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Guelph in Canada. Most resolutions actually require many behavior changes. Sure, some are straightforward, like remembering to take a calcium pill every day — but a successful weight-loss program, for example, calls for more than just a decision to eat less. You have to shop and cook differently, start or ramp up an exercise routine, maybe even ditch certain social or family events. "Thinking through these substrategies boosts success rates," says Newby-Clark. "But it would take too much attention and vigilance to do all that and also decide it's time to brush your teeth for the full two minutes and become better informed about world events."
3. Break It Up

Since your supply of self-control is finite, make resolutions that require small acts of will, not weeks of vigilance. " 'Lose 10 pounds' sounds specific, but it's less likely to work than behavioral goals like 'This week I'll try to go to the gym three times, take the stairs at work at least twice, and bring a healthy lunch every day,' " says Andrea Bonior, Ph.D., a psychologist in private practice in Washington, DC, and author of the "Baggage Check" column for the Washington Post Express. You'll feel good when you accomplish each goal, and your success will help bolster your resolve: The better you are at making small changes, the easier it will be for you to keep going.
4. Lift Your Spirits

Watching funny movies — or doing just about anything that puts you in a good mood — also helps when willpower starts wearing down. In a particularly sneaky study, researchers asked a group of 30 hungry students to sit in a room that smelled like freshly baked cookies. Although a plate of M&Ms and still-warm cookies was placed within reach, participants were told to snack on a bowl of radishes. Then they were left alone for 10 to 12 minutes in order to exhaust their self-restraint.

Next, some of the students watched a film clip of Robin Williams doing stand-up, while another group viewed a film about dolphins. When, in the last part of the experiment, they were asked to perform a complex tracing project that called for lots of self-control, students who'd seen the funny film stuck with the trying task for about 13 minutes. The Flipper crowd hung in for only nine.

5. Have Some OJ

Self-restraint — stifling your disagreement during a politically charged discussion, for example — can reduce blood glucose to less-than-optimal levels, report Florida State University researchers. But a glass of orange juice or lemonade can replenish your self-control. The brain relies almost exclusively on glucose for energy, so it has to be the real thing — artificially sweetened drinks won't deliver the jolt.
6. Outwit Your Inner Rebel

To give your willpower some wiggle room, avoid making 100 percent resolutions. "Absolutes like 'I'm giving up all sweets' or 'I'll never use my credit card again' set you up to try to get around your own overly strict rules," says Connie Stapleton, Ph.D., a psychologist in Augusta, GA. Instead, try drafting more limited restrictions like "I'll have sweets only when I'm in a fancy restaurant."

7. Crank Up Your Greatest Hits

When you feel discouraged, remind yourself how much you've accomplished in the past, suggests Elizabeth Lombardo, Ph.D. "People beat themselves up about still needing to lose the baby weight or no longer going to yoga class. But they overlook the long list of things they have done that required major self-discipline, like building a nest egg or sticking with the computer training they needed in order to get a better job." Lombardo's advice: "Write down 100 things you're proud of, right down to 'I get out of bed when I don't want to.' It'll remind you how much willpower you really have."
8. Be Extra Nice (Or Nasty)

Do unto others, and you'll be doing unto yourself as well. In a Harvard University study, psychologist Kurt Gray, Ph.D., gave 80 participants a dollar, told half the group to keep it and the other half to give it to charity, and then asked all the volunteers to hold a five-pound weight for as long as they could. Those who had donated their buck to a good cause held the weight significantly longer than the "selfish" ones.

But imagining doing something not nice makes us even stronger. In another experiment, Gray asked participants to hold the weight while writing a story that involved their helping someone, harming someone, or doing something neutral. Those who envisioned dastardly deeds held the weight longer than the helpful ones, who in turn beat out the neutrals. Whether we're doing someone a good turn or a bad one, it increases our feeling of personal power, making it easier to stick with something uncomfortable, says Gray.

9. Use Your Senses

The primitive cravings center is highly susceptible to visual cues, explains Tufts University psychologist Christopher Willard, Psy.D. Draw on the strength of images by putting a photo of a thinner you on the fridge, or a picture of a Caribbean beach in your wallet near your credit cards to remind yourself of the vacation that you're saving for.
10. Finally, Get Out of Dodge

The same way a sprinter can tell when she doesn't have another 100 yards in her, "it's important to know when your resistance is tapped out," says Dr. Seppala. "Stress will wear it down. So will being hungry or tired." His advice for those times: Get away from whatever is tempting you until you've eaten and rested, which will give your willpower a fighting chance.

Write Your Ticket to Success

People who put their goals on paper are significantly more likely to achieve them than are those who merely make mental vows, research from Dominican University of California has shown. What's also key: posting your goal in places where you will see it often, says Marvin D. Seppala, M.D., of Hazelden. "Your will matters most the moment you make a resolution — and you'll want to be able to recapture the intensity of that moment again and again." Share what you've written, too: The Dominican study found that those who told friends or family about their goals did better than those who didn't, and people who e-mailed their support team weekly progress updates did best of all. Social approval — as in "You look great!" — gives your brain a surge of soothing oxytocin, explains Joseph Shrand, M.D., of Harvard.

Reprinted from webmd.com