If you’ve been following us for a while now, you’ve probably noticed a few drum beats in our content that we return to again and again, like “meeting people where they are” and “doing what you can do.” We come back to these credos all the time because it’s so important to us that folks not let their ideas of fitness or of their own abilities and limitations get in the way of making healthy lifestyle changes right now. Like our co-founder Tom Pecht says, getting active doesn’t have to be a whole production. And better than the “perfect workout” is the workout you did today. No matter how long it lasted or how sweaty you got, if you did something to get moving, you took a step in the right direction. And the most effective way to take that step is to start from where you are and do what you can do.
Doing What You Can Do
As much as many of us would like there to be one magic workout plan that would fix all your ailments and get you into the best shape of your life (“Just tell me what to do, and I’ll do it!”), the truth is that no such thing exists. We are all unique, from our genes to our environments to the attitudes and values we’ve had instilled in us over the course of our lifetimes. No two people are alike, so no two fitness journeys are either. Following someone else’s fitness plan is unlikely to give you the same exact results that it’s given to the other person. Or worse, it could cause you to hurt yourself by not taking your individual needs into account.
Starting from where you are by doing what you can do is key to making a sustainable lifestyle change. What does not starting from where you are look like? For some of us, it might look like those New Year’s resolutions that had us signing up for an expensive exercise class membership, committing ourselves to going five times a week, and quickly losing steam when the classes were too intense or our schedule didn’t actually allow for the time commitment. Or going all-in on a new sport like pickleball and getting injured by playing for three straight hours when previously we hadn’t been consistently active.
Don’t get us wrong, it is great to have goals and to do activities you enjoy. But when it comes to your fitness goals, slow and steady truly wins the race. You might think of it as a practice in letting go of the “instant gratification” attitude so ingrained in our culture. You’re not only strengthening your body but also your self-control, which is an attribute commonly seen in the highly successful.
What’s Your Starting Point?
Doing what you can do means creating and working towards a goal that makes sense in the context of your current situation. So first, you’ll want to consider what your current situation is. How many times do you currently exercise in a week? Do you spend a lot of time seated? Do your leisure activities include movement? Are you able to perform the same physical tasks as you used to or that you want to with ease? Maybe your first goal is to go for a five-minute walk once a day. After you’ve established the habit for a few weeks, then maybe the next goal is to make it a ten-minute walk every day, and so on. The incremental progress in workout intensity might feel slow, but the goal you’re really striving for is consistency. And by ratcheting up workout intensity slowly over time, you’re far likelier to have a consistent habit of physical activity.
Perhaps you have been more or less sedentary for some time. Maybe an injury or surgery greatly reduced your activity levels, or life happened and the time you used to have for your fitness goals suddenly evaporated as other priorities took center stage, like kids and career. There’s no shame in it; it happens to so many of us. Just look at the statistics on inactivity in adults in the U.S.! If that’s your starting point, you are definitely not alone.
Or maybe you have a physical limitation that has made it difficult to find a workout plan that works around the troublesome bits of your body. Short of hiring a personal trainer or a physical therapist, which may or may not be covered by insurance (or at least not covered indefinitely), you may be hard pressed to find workouts that can be tailored to your abilities without breaking the bank.
For the folks who are beginning from the less-active end of the spectrum for whatever reason, much of what exists in the fitness marketplace can feel out of reach. Or like there is some prerequisite level of fitness you must first achieve on your own before you can participate in the rest of the offerings. Unfortunately, the attitudes of many organizations and individuals on the other side of that “prerequisite level” can reinforce this idea. Preconceived notions about what an inactive person can or will (or rather can’t or won’t) do have created a gap in the marketplace where virtually no one is reaching out to less active folks in an accessible way. Either you must figure it out on your own or pay the price of personalized training to get “up to speed.”
A New Way to Restart Your Fitness Journey
That gap in the market is one that we at Reclaim Lifestyles have witnessed too many loved ones be failed by (or have been failed by ourselves). Each person on our team has connected to our mission deeply because we all have someone we know who did not have access to the tools and knowledge they needed to change their lifestyle habits. Whether it’s having a front-row seat to the decline of aging parents who no longer have the mental fortitude to build new habits, or watching a sibling struggle with health issues brought on by decades of poor diet and little exercise, or receiving a diagnosis of our own and feeling the painful effects of an inactive lifestyle catch up with us, we all have something that drives us personally in our mission to help people live longer, healthier lives.
The idea that less active folks are not a demographic worth targeting in the fitness industry is the first that we have set out to prove wrong. We believe that by providing access to tools that make getting healthier simple, we can turn the tide on those increasing numbers of inactive adults in the U.S. By meeting people where they are and allowing them to do what they can do, we remove many of the hurdles that have tripped up so many attempting to embark on a fitness journey.
Enter the Restart! app. By combining the latest fitness science and human expertise with a proprietary algorithm that builds and adjusts individualized workout plans according to the input and feedback from each user (or as we like to call them, Reclaimer), the Restart! app is poised to fill the gap in the fitness tech marketplace by being one of the only tools made with less active to inactive individuals in mind. Those same drum beats—”meet people where they are” and “do what you can do”—are at the core of the Restart! app.
How Restart! Helps You Do What You Can Do
When you download the Restart! app, the onboarding process begins with some simple data collection (name, birthday, gender) before taking you through a series of exercises that will help the app determine your baseline—so we can meet you where you are. You’ll follow that workout—doing what you can do—and answering a few questions after each one to tell the app what works for you and what doesn’t. Based on your feedback, the app will build your completely customized workouts. Don’t like doing a particular exercise, or have an injury or other issue that precludes your participation in another? No problem! Let the app know to leave it out and it will adjust to offer alternatives.
Each Restart! workout is unique to each Reclaimer, but no matter what combo of exercises you have in your queue, you’ll be sure to get a full-body workout that helps build strength in all the areas you need. Our exercise expert, Ben Dreyer, built the Restart! exercise library based on his own experience training individuals who need modifications in their fitness routine to account for some kind of limitations. Just as Ben would run a client through exercises that ensure their ability to perform all the primal pattern movements necessary for independent living, the app’s workouts cover all the same bases. Even if you need to opt out of a particular exercise, the app will fill that slot with a work-around option.
One of the very best parts of the Restart! app workouts? You don’t need any special equipment or a membership to a gym to begin. Yup, you don’t even need to leave your house! Every exercise is done with only your body weight. All you need is your phone and enough space to safely perform your workout. Your workouts are available at any time, so you can workout when it works for you. Talk about not having to make it a whole production, right?
By offering accessible, personalized workouts that can be done in your own home, we at Reclaim Lifestyles hope to enable a whole legion of less active and inactive adults to reclaim their health with consistent physical activity. By meeting people where they are and helping them to do what they can do, we hope to inspire a population segment that may have felt neglected and discouraged by the fitness industry. We have all seen the negative effects of an inactive lifestyle on our loved ones or ourselves, and the science on how to combat those effects is clear: get moving, any way you can, anywhere you can, any time you can. Keep it simple, start where you are, and do what you can do.
Ready to get Restarted? Download the Restart! app at the links below. And for a limited time, get a free 3-month trial, with plans starting at $24.99/quarter after the trial period ends. Join us today in living longer, healthier lives!