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Amanda Wilde (Host): This is Community Connect: presented by Tampa General Hospital. I'm Amanda Wilde. Joining me is TGH Fitness Center Manager, Brian Pirolozzi. Welcome, Brian. Are you ready to see into the future? Because we're looking ahead to New Year's resolutions.

Brian Pirolozzi: Hi, Amanda. Yes, I think there is no time like today to get started. I know we're maybe a month or two away from everyone's new goals, but it's better to start planning now and we'll hopefully get more into that here soon.

Host: It all comes accelerated at the end of the year, so we're quickly closing in on the New Year. And there's always New Year's resolutions to think about, and one of the top ones we hear about are centered around fitness and health. Can you explain why resolutions about exercise are so popular?

Brian Pirolozzi: Yeah. And to do justice, I had to go and do some homework, I think to really understand really where New Year's resolutions came from. I've been in this industry now for over 15 years as a health coach and personal trainer, but I never understood why people just picked January 1st. But if I may, I just did a little bit of a history search. And so, I learned that this all started back thousands of years ago with the Babylonian and like the Roman Empire, and more particular with like Julius Caesar when he reorganized the Modern Day Calendar, as we know to happen the new year start on January 1st. And so, January is named after the Roman God Janus, who is depicted as having like two faces: one facing the past, one facing the future. And that's supposed to represent change and transition and prosperity into the new year. And so, that's been going on for centuries.

But I think that the reality of why people are so excited about New Year's resolutions is because it allows them to have a turn of a page and everybody gets a fresh start. And so, kind of looking at some of the data that we've seen historically. And then, some of the early surveys, we can already anticipate that about 60% of U.S. adults are going to go ahead and plan on a health, a fitness, or like an exercise goal in mind, so just under a hundred million people here.

And it's worth noting that about 50% of those individuals are going to plan for a goal to lose weight and build muscle. About 44% of them want to go ahead and just establish a regular exercise routine because they haven't been successful in the past. And 42% want to go and seek better mental clarity and focus through physical activity. And the downside though, which is why I think New Year's is so popular is because people don't stick to them. You know, they often fall off not long afterwards. And so, what we'll be seen from like a success rate is that about 23% of people will abandon their goals within the first week, so they don't make it very, very long. And so, 36% will go ahead and stick with them past the first month, but only 9% actually keep the resolutions for a full year. So, January's like a new page for everybody to go ahead and restart. And what we've seen as a common reasons for it is lack of motivation, unrealistic goals, and poor planning. And so, I guess in other words, looking back at the history of New Year's resolutions, people have been kind of failing at their goals for centuries.

Host: That's a fascinating and sharply accurate historical context. We know there are many benefits of exercise and physical activity, so it's not that that is the issue. But can you highlight some of the top ones for our listeners? And then we'll get into what you said about lack of motivation, unrealistic goals, and poor planning.

Brian Pirolozzi: So, we know the very common ones when we talk about exercise. And you can think about physical exercise being the traditional sense of it, like cardiovascular training, strength training, flexibility training as well. And so, the really important ones that people tend to always focus on for cardiovascular training is that it'll improve your heart, it'll improve your overall stamina, but I think people also forget about some of the lesser known benefits, which for really working on your cardiovascular fitness too, it also aids in food digestion. It also helps to boost cognitive function for your memory and focus and clarity.

As you kind of roll over to like the strength goals, if anybody has those as a particular set, yes, that it will increase strength of your muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Especially as we get older, we've seen a lot of different types of studies that have shown that once you get into your like 40s and 50s and 60s, you just lose 30% of the muscle mass that you've had back in your late 20s, early 30s. But some of the other key pieces of strength training again, is that it does help boost your metabolism for weight management. I know people think about only cardio to burn weight, but actually building more muscle mass helps to boost your metabolism. And then, again, as we lose muscle mass, we also lose bone density. And for individuals who are just getting a little bit older, or for anybody who has like a history of osteopenia or osteoporosis, this helps to improve bone density. So, that way, if you have an accident, a bump, you're less likely to go and suffer for like a fracture or a break.

Then, lastly, talking about flexibility, right? You know, improving a range of motion, having greater degrees of freedom so that way you can bend down to the floor, you can reach for that top cabinet and get that cup. We know that's the key benefit of it. But of course, people don't really realize that working on your flexibility also greatly improves your posture, and it does improve muscle relaxation. I'm sure for you, Amanda, and for everybody else, you know, we can all talk about how tight our neck is and our upper back, but it helps them improve muscle relaxation, improve posture. And then, of course, just from the side effects of exercise, it does help to decrease some of the soreness that you might expect with daily or weekly activity.

Host: So with all that being true, why do we have this lack of motivation and what can we do about that as one of the problems with maintaining our New Year's resolutions or an exercise regimen?

Brian Pirolozzi: I think people get really excited because everyone's on the same page January 1st, and there's a lot of marketing towards it, right? I mean, I'm sure there's all kinds of advertisements on social media to help get people into a gym, discounted opportunities to join. It's a giant movement that the entire country kind of takes a step forward. But then, as we kind of learn with the success because rates, one of those common causes of why people have failed is because of just poor planning. And people, I think, really underestimate the importance of planning, and we know it works. We've seen numerous systematic reviews and meta-analysis that show planning helps to reduce decision fatigue as it pertains to like making an exercise routine, right? You can pre-schedule your workouts to help eliminate that fatigue of having to decide daily. That also increases your own accountability. So if you have shared this with somebody else that you're preparing for exercise or preparing for a goal, it helps to create some sense of commitment. It also improves self-efficacy. So, you can see some of the progress, you know, month in and month out, and that allows you to continue to build that program that you started off with from just writing down a couple of quick little tips.

And then, ultimately, I think what the whole purpose of New Year's Solutions is to keep this as a long-term goal. You don't want to keep picking weight every single year as we see most individuals. We would love for people to say, "I want to lose 10, 20 pounds," and then keep it off so that way next year you have a new goal. And so, by planning effectively now can hopefully allow you to have new opportunities into the next new year.

So, a big thing that my industry does and we try to really focus on is to help build that guideline or that framework, that foundation. And I simply call it, "Get fit by planning your FITT," and FITT being spelled with two T's. And that stands for frequency, intensity, time, and type. And this principle, as we call it, this FITT principle, it really helps to ensure that you're exercising enough with adequate intensity and you're performing the correct type of training, best suited towards your goals. And so, if I can dive into those a little bit quickly here for you...

Host: Yeah, that would be great.

Brian Pirolozzi: Frequency really just talks about how often one should repeat a given set of exercises. And so, looking at different information, but like one in particular looking at the Department of Health and Human Services, they recommend for somebody who wants to do something with their cardiovascular health, generally five days a week is the idea. You know, you can do that five days a week without having to be too concerned of overworking yourself. If you want to build muscle and strength, two or three days is probably more ideal, and that's just based on your rotation of your exercises. And if you're looking to do flexibility, improve your flexibility goals, that can be done daily. We haven't seen a lot of issues with somebody trying to overstretch, and if anything, it's generally the opposite of that. So, frequency just helps us understand how often should I be aiming for a particular goal within cardiovascular training, muscle improvements, or flexibility.

Intensity, getting into the next piece of this is just really how hard should I push myself? So, we'll go ahead and kind of help break that down. And you can look at that objectively and then somewhat subjectively. Objectively looking at like your heart rate. I'm sure people have the wearable devices now on their hands or on their wrists. They have rings now for this. But you can kind of see your heart rate in real time, and that heart rate could be indicative of how hard you're pushing yourself. And then, again, based on your goals, you may not always want to go as hard as possible. You may want to have more of a moderate intensity based on their goal, because we know that lower heart rate training might support more aerobic function and maybe weight management and cognitive stuff, whereas having a higher heart rate, generally speaking, is really good for like building muscular power and muscular performance. So, you can track intensity, looking at your heart rate, for example, or you can go ahead and see how good your perception is. That's always a fun game. Everyone thinks that they're probably working out to a challenging point, but what we like to try to do is help people understand their perception to reality.

And so, what we use is a scale called the ratings of preserved exertion. And it's a scale from one to 10 where you would finish a given set of exercises and you would say, "All right, that was a difficulty of a seven out of a ten," where one is very easy, you can do this for a very long time, like you're the Energizer bunny. And then, a 10 being, "Well, if I had to do one more rep, I'm probably going to go ahead and have bad form or bad technique." And so, the idea is that we want to help people strive for more of a difficult intensity. Again, based on your goal, if you're looking for more aerobic functioning, or if you're looking for cognitive health or weight management, you might be better suited with maybe a moderate intensity on that ratings of preserved exertion, or if you're looking to help build some sound strength and performance, you would want to be at a higher end. And you can use this over and over again when you're looking at new pieces of equipment. So if you're going from, let's say, one piece of machinery to another one that looks very similar, but the weight might not be the same. So, you might use, let's say, a dumbbell for a leg exercise, let's say a squat, and then you go to leg press machine, you're not going to keep up with the same weight. Like, you might use 25 pounds to do a squat, and then maybe 150 pounds, if not more, to do the leg press. You can still use that RPE scale to help you understand like where you should be pushing yourself. When do I know to add more weight or to add more repetitions is if your scale changes. Because if you can say, "I was at a seven for maybe a couple of weeks and now I'm only at a five," now it's time for you to go ahead and maybe make an adjustment in some form or fashion. And really picking the two of those, you know, I know that they're two good options, but a lot of times deciding whether you want to use intensity objectively, looking at a heart rate, or looking at it subjectively, could come down to your overall current health. For example, if you're someone who's taking beta blockers, where you're heart rate won't really ever get that high because of the medication you're taking, you probably shouldn't use a heart rate monitor to effectively track your effort. You probably want to use more of like the RPE scale just to kind of help make sure you're not overdoing it.

And then, the last two are really quick. It's just time that just tells you how long you should be working out for. And then, again, general guidelines will dictate that. If you're someone who likes to go extra hard, you can probably just aim for 75 minutes a week, kind of more in the vigorous category. If you are more of a moderate exerciser, from an intensity standpoint, about 150 minutes works best. And then, if you're someone who likes to do things more leisurely with light activity, about 230 minutes a week, and that can be broken up really however you want. You know, 30 minutes a day, five days a week, two and a half hour sessions in total. It's really up to the individual based on their current schedule.

And then, finally, type, it's just based on your specificity or your specific goal. And the example I'll make with this is, if you're looking to do a 5K, and this is your first time doing a 5K for a run, and you're not someone who's a big runner, but you want to prepare, so you do other forms of cardiovascular training. You do like the elliptical. You might go on the bicycle, you do a StairMaster. Well, sure, all of those will help improve your cardiovascular fitness and stamina. But if you're looking to run, you need to really practice on a treadmill running-- or better yet getting outside-- because those other forms of exercising with the other cardiovascular pieces may not quite have that kind of relatability for race day. And the same thing works out if you're looking with weight, your goal is to do a pullup, for example, my own body weight. I want to do that, my own pullup. Well, sure, you can use other forms of pieces of equipment to build up muscles in your back and your chest and your arms. But if you don't practice doing pullups ever and it's race day, well, you're probably going to have a more difficult time, even though you've got some of the strong muscles, but you haven't practiced the actual pattern. And so, the idea behind the type is probably going to be indicative of your goal.

Host: And you mentioned having realistic goals versus unrealistic ones that we tend to have. What else can you tell us about how to set those goals for ourselves?

Brian Pirolozzi: It's always easy to pick the big number, because you have a whole year to shoot for it, right? But I think that it really kind of starts with the individual. It's kind of like determining your readiness for change. And it doesn't have to be now, like people think January 1st, which I know is what we're really kind of concluding, but it's really understanding are you ready for this? Because sometimes not accomplishing your goals could lower your ambition and your motivation. So, it's like understanding: Are you ready to start within six months? Am I ready to start within a couple of weeks? Am I'm ready to start now? And it's kind of thinking about when is the appropriate timeframe for you to go ahead and actually make this type of lifestyle change. It's to be specific with those goals. I know we can get easily-- and just say, "I want to lose weight and build strength." But then, how do you really measure that? You know, strength can be anything. And weight loss could be anything too. It could be muscle mass. It could be body fat, it could be, you know, water weight, or it could be other forms. But be specific. I want to lose body fat or I want to go ahead and build muscle in my legs, my quad specifically, or something along those lines. So, don't be afraid to be specific. And that allows you to really see success because you can maybe set small short-term goals about each one of those individual goals that you have. And that would be the stepping stone for these large goals.

And I guess the biggest thing is you can start now. You can at least give yourself a test run before January. So, if you're thinking about starting January 1st, there's no harm starting December 1st or December 15th, and giving yourself a bit of a practice run so that way you don't have to run into those same bumps and bruises that you're going to start with in January 1st if this is your first time or your second time trying the same goal over again.

Host: So, it sounds like if you start planning a bit before and work on small goals, as you said, stepping stones, and use perhaps the FITT principle, you have a framework that sets you up for success.

Brian Pirolozzi: Yes. It is about planning. Planning is so important. I would have to admit, being in this industry for quite some time, I can plan for my own workout. But sometimes I kind of lose luster on the intensity. And then, I get a little bit carefree about my frequency. And even when my team and I will go ahead and maybe plan for like a team fun organizational-- like for the month of October, we did a challenge for a Halloween challenge of an exercise routine that was spelled out specifically. It told us how many days each week we were going to be doing cardio, strength, and our flexibility. It dived into the intensity. It talked about the type of exercise that we were going to be doing and the time. And for somebody that I would say, "I do this all day long for the last 15 years," having that plan, I have never felt such improvement after one month of just being into another organized routine. So, I can speak to that. Planning is such a huge, important part.

And then, using the FITT principle just helps you really cultivate that plan. So that way, you can go back to it and realize, "All right, I'm deviating from this plan. My goal is to do three days of cardio each week after work for 30 minutes at an intensity that's about 60 to 70% of my heart rate. And I'm not even doing it once a week. I'm only doing it at a leisurely pace. Let go back to my goals," right? That helps me build up that confidence and that accountability. And then, of course, hopefully, to create that long-term habit that we're really shooting for for everybody.

Host: Now, Brian, do you have any last tips for people who have been previously unsuccessful with sticking to New Year's goals to be more successful this year?

Brian Pirolozzi: Yeah. Find resources or look into resources, and the obvious one is personal training. I know it can be a bit scary to go ahead and have a professional put you through the numbers, but a good trainer will really go ahead and sit you down to establish these set goals that we're just now talking about. And they're going to first tell you why we're doing it. And then, they're going to show you how to do it. And they're going to be your biggest advocate. So, there are many clubs out there with phenomenal trainers and just to go and think that a small investment in your health can pay long-term dividends just to go ahead and get started. So if it's not finding a trainer in that regard, a personal trainer in that regard, there is finding an accountability partner. If you have a coworker, a loved one, a spouse, be open and honest. Share your goals. They might be able to help pick you up on a day where you're not feeling like you're going to accomplish today's task, so they can check in with you. They can make sure that you're going to check off that box that you did it today, if that's all that that it takes. So, find an accountability partner, and that could be, again, a personal trainer that you've worked with previously.

And then, there are tons of different types of regimen apps that are available for free. The Peloton app is a great one. You know, FitBot is another, MyFitnessPal. Nike has one too. And so, there are so many opportunities for resources that people can take advantage of. And it's really about education. And the education is to know that it's your race. It's not somebody else's race. It's my goals. It's not what I'm seeing on top of social media. And if anything, again, it's just taking the time to go ahead and make sure that you're ready for this.

Host: So, using those resources can really help you also establish a really firm foundation, at least from which to work from. And I think your idea of accountability, though scary is a good one, either to personal trainer or to someone else, involving other people is a good way to support yourself and keep yourself motivated. Any other resources people can take advantage of for help in the fitness journey, whether it's New Year's or anytime?

Brian Pirolozzi: Yeah. I'd be remiss to go ahead and just maybe speak about how we can help here within my own organization. And if people really want a great resource, we provide like a free digital book that kind of speaks at large on the FITT principle. And then, obviously, talks about other forms to think about when it comes to warming up and cooling down. And just more general information about how to go ahead and set smart goals for yourself. We can provide that to anybody who is interested at no cost. Just email us at fitness@tgh.org and you'll be in contact with one of my team members, if not myself, and we can provide you guys with that free digital textbook that really elaborates further from our discussion today.

Host: Well, TGH Fitness Center Manager, Brian Pirolozzi, thank you so much for helping us figure out the smart way to approach New Year's resolution this year to help us be more successful with fitness in the coming year. I really appreciate your time.

Brian Pirolozzi: Yeah. Thank you for having me on. It's a pleasure.

Host: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and follow Community Connect: presented by TGH on your favorite podcast platform. I'm Amanda Wilde. And this is Community Connect: presented by Tampa General Hospital. Thanks for listening.