If you’re looking for 30-day fitness challenges to help you get back into a regular exercise routine, crush your weight loss goals, and tighten and tone your body, you’ve come to the right place! With stay-at-home and social distancing orders in place across the globe, many of us have seen a decline in our physical activity and an increase on our bathroom scales. Our lives look very different than they once did, and with gyms closed and the colder weather approaching, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find the time and motivation to exercise.
Of course, a little weight gain during a global pandemic is hardly something to feel ashamed of. Our priorities have shifted, and our main focus should be maintaining our physical and emotional well-being, finding ways to stay positive, and ensuring our financial security. For some people, this may mean putting exercise completely on hold for in order to focus on other, more pressing matters. On the flip side, your body and mind may be craving some feel-good, exercise-induced endorphins to help you get out of a funk.
Whether you have 10 minutes or an hour available to focus on your exercise goals, these 30-day fitness challenges offer a simple and easy way to find the motivation you need to get back at it! You can choose one challenge or combine several into a daily circuit depending on your goals and the time and space you have available to you.
What Is a 30-Day Challenge?
As the name suggests, 30-day challenges involve adopting one new habit for 30 days. It’s a fun way to try something new for a specific period of time, and by limiting your commitment to only one month, it’s easier to stay motivated. Adopting new habits can be challenging, but imposing a 30-day limit helps keep things manageable, thus helping to keep your motivation up. 30-day challenges offer a great way to get yourself ‘unstuck’, and are becoming very popular for health, fitness, and self-improvement.
How to Be Successful
Be realistic
In order for 30-day fitness challenges to be successful, they should challenge you without feeling too overwhelming. For example, if you live a very sedentary lifestyle and want to commit to 30 days of physical activity, consider setting a goal of moving your body for 30 minutes every day instead of signing up for a 5K. This will allow you to experiment with different types of movement so you can find the things you enjoy most, making it more likely that you will stick with it for the long haul.
Make it manageable
When we make personal goals for ourselves, many of us have a tendency of taking things to the extreme, particularly when it comes to setting goals around weight loss and fitness. While it can be exciting and admirable to take on huge goals, you need to take into consideration things like your current physical state, how much time you have available to you each day, and the need to give your body time to rest and recover between workouts.
Only focus on ONE change at a time
As tempting as it is to adopt multiple new habits in one go, there is tons of research out there that suggests the only way to lasting change is to focus on ONE new habit at a time. This allows you to give 100% of your effort, making it less likely that you’ll fall off the wagon and quit. The beauty of 30-day challenges is that you can switch gears every 30 days, allowing you to focus on multiple habits throughout the year!
Create your own challenge
There are tons of 30-day fitness challenges out there to motivate and inspire you, but don’t be afraid to create your own based on your goals and what you’re capable of. Whether you commit to doing 10 squats a day for 30 days, or pick several different types of movement to create your own personalized 30-day fitness challenges each month, all that matters is that you stay committed and stick with it!
Replace bad habits with new ones
If you’re cutting bad habits out of your life, you will be much more successful if you find a healthy replacement to fill the void. For example, if you’re giving up alcohol for 30 days, you may find it helpful to replace your nightly glass of wine with a walk around the neighborhood. This is a great way to work on multiple goals – cleaning up your diet and squeezing in some fitness!
Act now
While it can be tempting to wait until a new year (or a new month) to commit to 30-day fitness challenges, that way of thinking can actually be quite limiting. If you feel stuck, you will be much more motivated to make changes if you act NOW. Don’t allow a silly date to hold you back!
The Best 30-Day Fitness Challenges
And now for the fun part! We’ve curated tons of 30-day fitness challenges below, which we’ve grouped by type of workout. The idea is to pick one or several that you want to commit to, assess your current level of expertise for each, and then set progressive goals for the next 30 days. For example, you may decide you want to focus only on improving your pushups. You may start with one pushup on the first day, with the goal of adding an additional pushup a day for 30 days. Or, you may decide you want to increase your core strength and, instead of focusing on only one move, you might create a 30-day plan that has you doing 3 different core moves each day to mix things up and target different areas of your core. Take a look at the 30-day fitness challenges below and decide what the best approach is for you and your goals!
CARDIO
Burpees
Mountain Climbers
High Knees
Jumping Jacks
Jump Rope
Speed Skaters
ARMS
Bicep Curls
Arnold Presses
Tricep Dips
Tricep Kickbacks
Tricep Extensions
Side Raises
Bent Over Reverse Fly
Overhead Shoulder Press
Pushups
Kettle Bell Swings
ABS AND CORE
Crunches
Situps
High Plank
Elbow Plank
Side Plank
Plank Jacks
Bicycle Crunches
Flutter Kicks
Lying Leg Raises
Hollow Hold
LEGS AND GLUTES
Squats
Sumo Squats
Curtsy Lunges
Wall Sit
Lateral Lunges
Plie Squat Calf Raises
Single Leg Deadlifts
Whether you’re goal is to ease back into an exercise routine, or get 6-pack abs by summer, I hope these 30-day fitness challenges inspire you to get creative and find ways to turn your goals into reality. Whether you workout for 10 minutes or an hour each day, remember that consistency is key. Here’s to a healthy and happy year!