A new trending workout seems to pop up every month. Each one guarantees a happier, healthier, stronger and leaner you.
There’s a viral challenge known as “75 Hard” that promises to improve your mental toughness if you work out for 45 minutes twice a day — while also following a diet and drinking a gallon of water a day, among other things. Another, known as 12-3-20 (not to be confused with 12-3-30 or 25-7-2), claims to transform your body. And there’s always some new kettlebell routine with thousands of TikTok views saying it can make you a faster runner almost instantly.
There’s no doubt that a vigorous fitness program could help improve your stamina, in the same way that eating a healthier diet and committing to more sleep can help you feel more energized and rested. The actual workouts in these plans are often great, but the problem is how they make you think about exercise.
Often the advice of these fitness strategies is “misleading at best and dangerous at worst,” said Victoria Sekely, physical therapist and founder of Train Smart Run Strong, leaving you feeling worse than before and leading to injury or burnout.
Here’s how to determine which exercise fads might help you reach your goals and which might cause you injury or frustration.
Be realistic about your starting point.
Many fads are actually designed for people who already have a workout routine and may not be suitable for beginners. Influencers don’t know where you’re starting from.
“The person on social media giving you advice doesn’t necessarily have any background in it other than their own anecdotal experience,” said Heather Milton, clinical exercise physiologist and body specialist at the Sports Performance Center at NYU Langone Health.
If you’ve never worked with heavy weights, for example, swinging the kettlebell ladder every day can cause injury. And while some plans don’t dictate the type or intensity of exercise, starting a plan with one or more hours of exercise per day can be overwhelming.
Instead, Ms Milton recommends starting simple, with 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week. Define for yourself what is average, instead of taking someone else’s word for it.
“Each person has individual needs based on genetics, medical history, including injury history and body type,” Ms Milton added. These factors affect our ability to do different exercises and determine how beneficial they will be, he said.
If you can, work with a professional who can help you tailor workouts to your current fitness level.
Focus on both “process goals” and end goals.
Viral workout programs often boil down to a simple equation: Do a specific activity for a specific number of days to achieve a specific result.
Experts call these kinds of results – a faster kilometer or the ability to do more pull-ups – a performance (or final) goal. To get there, it’s helpful to focus on what they call process goals: smaller, achievable steps, like improving technique, said Carla Meijen, a sports and exercise psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam.
One such process goal is to learn to listen to your body, a skill in itself. Being aware of your workouts is far more important to longevity and endurance than sticking to a rigid course in the short term, experts say. If you catch yourself having an off day and delaying a workout, instead of criticizing yourself, see it as an opportunity to build a process goal by working on mental toughness.
The same recommendations apply to athletes competing in a competition. Instead of focusing solely on one completion time—the performance goal—experts recommend identifying smaller goals along the way.
Avoid plans without rest days.
For many programs that are committed by a number of days, the challenge is a daily commitment, without breaks. If you skip a workout in the 75 Hard challenge or don’t follow your diet, you’re supposed to start over on day one.
While this can work for some people, most people need time to recover their bodies and minds, Dr. Szekely said.
“You can’t build muscle and get stronger and faster and do all those things without rest and recovery in the picture,” he said. “It’s normal how our bodies work.”
Don’t judge success by your looks.
Before and after photos can help many designs go viral. But be careful using your looks as a measure of success.
There is no single body type and our bodies do not respond to exercise in the same way, Ms Milton explained.
The most sustainable goals are about how you feel — with the goal of getting stronger, building endurance, or gaining flexibility. But a lot of it comes with patience and steady work, which isn’t usually the emphasis of a fitness fad.
“Habits are created by doing very simple, very easy things and slowly introducing them into your lifestyle,” Dr. Szekely said. “When we let go of perfection, we can really make progress.”
