What is a 30 day challenge?
A 30 day challenge is a personal challenge that lasts 30 days and during which you work towards a given goal every day. For example: in a 30 day fitness challenge you would aim to do fitness every day during 30 days.
Are 30 day challenge good for you?
It all comes doing to how you go through your 30 day challenge. If you give your maximum everyday during 30 days, you are most likely going to injure yourself before then end of your challenge. A better approach would be to vary the daily intensity thus allowing some periods to adjust or to recover from intense days. You body and your mind both need time to adjust a new effort and over stressing them will either lead to an injury or a burnout. Be mindful about how much effort you put in. And if in doubt, don’t hesitate to get in touch with a professional who will be able to guide you on your daily practice.
Should you do a 30 day challenge?
Yes, absolutely! 30 day challenges are a great way to allow yourself to focus on a long term goal. There are a variety a challenges possible and you can even set your own rules on your challenge to make it fit your own objective. Just make sure to read the rest of this article to make sure you get the best out of your challenge without suffering from it.
How to start a 30 day challenge?
With a 30 day challenge you aim for a longer term result. To be able to last the whole duration of the challenge you should start slow and easy. You could compare it to a marathon, and if you start a marathon with a sprint, you are unlikely to finish it. It is better to start too easy than too hard as it is difficult to recover from too hard, but it is easy to slowly increase the difficulty of the daily activity if it is too easy.
3 tips to be successful in your 30 day challenge
Make it fun
Since you are working on a long term goal, it is important to allow your brain to assimilate this new practice of yours as something positive and fun. To do so, start you challenge by making it easy and enjoyable for the first few days of your challenge. You’re not looking for progress at the beginning but on the long term. You can also celebrate the small wins by giving yourself a pat on the back or doing a little celebratory dance and the end of your daily practice, you earned it!
Rainy days are ok
It is most likely that someday along the way something is not going to go according to plan. It may be a rainy day, or a busy day at work, or any kind of emergency that require your attention that day and that eventually make you skip a day. That is perfectly fine and it happens to nearly everyone. Just get back to your challenge the next day and avoid stressing yourself over having missed that day or having to catch up: it will not be productive.
Stay flexible
During your challenge you are going to discover a lot about what you can and cannot do, and in many cases, that will not align with your original goal. No problem. Now that you have learned a bit more about what you are capable of, simply adjust your goal to what is more realistic. Don’t hesitate to repeate this and adjust your challenge several time along the way if you find it useful. Remember, this is YOUR challenge and You set the rules.
3 mistakes to avoid in a 30 day challenge
Continuously increasing the load each day
A type of challenge we often see online is start with 1 repetition on day1, add +1 each (2 reps on day2, 3 reps on day3, 4 reps on day4, … ) until 30 reps on day30. This kind of progression is way to fast and doesn’t allow any time for recovery. Such challenges are either way too easy at the beginning (because your are more or less already able to do the final 30 reps), or too difficult in which case you wont be able to finish and even worst you might injure yourself in the process.
Not allowing some days to recover
After an intense effort, the body needs time to recover, and this recovery process typically takes a couple days. It is then a good idea to keep intense sessions a few days apart and doing easier sessions during these recovery days to allow the body to rebuild itself and heal from micro-traumas. This is why people who workout at the gym daily alternate between leg day, core day, and arms day. This way each time they work on a particular muscle, it had 2 days to recover since the previous session on that specific muscle group.
Trying to catchup a missed day by doing double the next day
If you miss a day in your challenge, it is ok, don’t worry. Missing a day in your challenge is probably a sign that you are asking a bit too much to your body or mind, and it reacts by finding any kind of excuse not to work on your challenge. In this case, trying to double up the effort the next day will only make it worst. In fact, if you miss a day, the best to get back into your challenge is to get back with an easy day so that you can more easily assimilate your challenge with a more pleasurable experience and thus have less chance of missing another day in the future.
Can you build a habit with a 30 day challenge?
There is a common misconception that it takes 21 days to create a new habit. But there is no research to support this idea. In fact, most research indicate that it takes usually between 30 to 90 days to build a new habit, the average being 67 days. There simply isnt a fixed number of days that will magically make you stick with a new habit. It will depend on many factors. If your goal is to build a habit with a 30 day challenge, be prepared to repeat your challenge 2 or 3 times in a row in order to truly build in you habit.
What are the most common 30 day challenges?
The most common type of 30 day challenge is by far fitness related: working out, going to the gym, running, and many others.
Other popular challenges are:
- learning a language
- meditation
- yoga
- cold showers
- morning routine
- gratitude
- reading
- writing/journaling
Check out more about 30 day challenges:
- 30 day Fitness Challenge
- The Yoga plan I wish I had when I started
- Running plan – Couch to 5km – 8 week
- I took cold showers for 3 month
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