How to Build a Sustainable Fitness Routine in Retirement
Who amongst us hasn't hit a new year running (perhaps literally) with a new fitness challenge to tackle? You know the ones: "Just 30 days to a six-pack!" or "Try this 100-day plank challenge!" Add in a big life transition like entering retirement, and it can be tempting to attempt to overhaul your entire fitness regimen on a dime. It's an understandable impulse, especially if you've made some exciting retirement plans that require a certain baseline level of fitness. And a new year can be an especially motivating time. But embarking on a fitness journey does not have to mean going from zero to 60 overnight. In fact, taking on a challenge that has a beginning and end is less likely to lead to forming a sustainable fitness habit. That's why we advocate for fitness goals based on consistency over other metrics.
So when you're entering retirement, how do you build a consistent fitness habit?
"What do I do with all this time?"
When our fitness expert Ben Dreyer works with Studio Melt clients who have recently retired, he hears this question a lot. Suddenly your time is yours to direct. All those hours you spent on your career, raising children, time essentially spent living for others—now those calendar slots are wide open. It can be overwhelming to have so much free time.
This is when Ben likes to say that now your job is your health. If health was a tier three or four priority while other things and people had to come first, now it gets to be number one. And if you think about it, that's not selfish. You have to take care of yourself in order to be present for the people who love and depend on you. So making your health your job is how you ensure that you can be as present as possible for them for as long as possible.
And when you reorient your time around your health, the question of what to do with your time has some answers. Instead of waking up each morning with a full day yawning ahead of you, feeling paralyzed by choice, you can wake up each morning and ask yourself, "What am I going to do to improve my health today?" Making one choice based on improving your health each day, even if the activity you choose is just a 20-minute walk, can help anchor you to a sense of purpose: taking care of yourself on purpose. And turning those daily choices into habits will make it easier for you to sustain them long past the typical new year's resolution motivational shelf life.
Start Small
Start with Two Days/Week
If you're not already active on a regular basis, you don't need to start working out five to seven days a week, and you're more likely to burn out and give up if you start that way (or worse, injure yourself). Two days a week is an excellent place to start, or if you're already active a couple days a week, try adding a third day for a few weeks until it feels like a regular part of your weekly routine. Consistency is key, so start with something you're confident you can keep up. Giving yourself small, achievable goals will help you build momentum and motivation to take on each incremental step towards a more robust fitness habit.
20 Minutes
Did you know that 80% of the health benefits of exercise happen in the first 20 minutes? According to Gretchen Reynolds' book The First 20 Minutes, for folks who haven't been very active, getting up and moving for just 20 minutes confers the bulk of the health benefits of exercise, such as lowering risk of chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. So when you're building your fitness routine, you don't have to set aside hours and hours for long, strenuous workouts. Keep it simple and add activities in 20-30 minute blocks and know that those 20 minutes are absolutely valuable. And if you can't get 20 minutes all in one go, two 10-minute walks in a day can give you the same benefits.
Recovery Days Count
Even if you can work out every day, should you? Recovery days are not only valid but necessary. Your body needs rest time when you're building strength and endurance. If you're worried that "days off" will become a slippery slope to too many inactive days in a row, we recommend incorporating recovery activities that are beneficial to your health, like a mindfulness practice. Meditation, gentle stretching, social interaction, and volunteering are all extremely healthy activities that let you take a break from working out while still taking care of your mind and body.
Diversify Activities
You may have heard the nutritional advice of adding a lot of color to your plate to ensure you're eating more healthful whole foods. When you're adding activities to your fitness "plate," it's similarly important to have a variety of types of exercises to take care of all the different facets of your fitness. If you're just starting out with two days/week of activity, assign a theme to each day: perhaps one is Cardio Day and the other is Strength Day. Then, as you build up to working out more days per week, you can maybe add in a Balance Day or a Flexibility Day, or split Strength into different muscle group focus days. But if that all sounds overwhelming now, remember that consistency is key. If you can start with consistently walking a couple times a week, you're already going to reap tremendous benefits from something that is accessible and free. And when you're ready to add a Strength Day, the Restart! app makes it incredibly easy to start with no extra equipment or gym membership required.
Target Zone 2 Cardio
Cardio exercises are divided into different levels of intensities based on heart rate, called Zones. Zone 1 is recovery, when your heart is beating at around 50-60% of your max heart rate (MHR). One level up from that is Zone 2, which is light intensity exercise with your heart rate at 60-70% of MHR. More and more research has shown that there are massive metabolic benefits to training in Zone 2. And because it is easier to do than higher intensity cardio in Zones 3-5, you need less recovery time in between bouts. If you're not sure if you're in your Zone 2, one way to tell is by whether or not you can carry on a conversation while you're moving. If you're able to comfortably speak to a friend or sing to yourself while feeling that your heart rate is slightly elevated, you're in Zone 2. If you can't talk anymore, you've moved up into Zone 3. Walking with a friend is a great way to get in some Zone 2 cardio and social interaction, giving you a one-two punch in improving your physical and mental health.
Exercise Snacks
In addition to dedicating specific time to intentionally working out, you can also improve your health by squeezing exercise "snacks" into your daily life. Maybe that means parking at the far end of the grocery store lot, or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Finding small ways to move more will have big compounding benefits on your health.
Building a sustainable fitness routine is about starting small, incorporating a variety of activities, and gradually adding on. By setting realistic goals and making your health your job, you will set yourself up for a successful retirement with the ability to comfortably engage with all the dreams you've had for this time of your life. After working so hard to reach this stage, don't you deserve that? We know you do. That's why we built the Restart! app, to help people at any fitness stage improve their health with accessible exercises tailored to their abilities and preferences. Be one of the first to download the app when it launches by signing up for notifications here: [LINK TO SIGN UP]