The Truth About 30-Day Fitness Challenges: An Expert Trainer Weighs In

30-day fitness and diet challenges are incredibly popular right now. Hardly a week goes by without a new challenge emerging on social media, promising amazing results in just a few short weeks.

But can these challenges really deliver on their promises, or are they just another fitness fad?

As a veteran personal trainer, I’m often asked about 30-day fitness challenges and whether they work. Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer. That’s because not only are some challenges better than others, but participant readiness and suitability are also critical factors.

In short, a good 30-day fitness challenge for one person may be completely unsuitable for another.

I’ve done several 30-day fitness challenges and supervised my clients during many more. I’ve also created quite a few. With all that experience in mind, in this article, I share my expert opinion on the effectiveness and safety of 30-day fitness challenges.

What is a 30-Day Fitness Challenge?

30-day fitness challenges come in all shapes and sizes. Some are relatively easy and involve low amounts of exercise, so they’re perfect for beginners. Others are more time-consuming and intense and best left to more experienced exercisers.

Some fitness challenges target specific muscle groups, while others build cardiovascular fitness or aid in weight loss. There are flexibility and mobility challenges, too.

Consequently, whatever your fitness goal, there is probably a 30-day challenge to help you reach it.

While the methods and exercises vary, the structure of most 30-day fitness challenges is the same: work out every day for 30 days straight. There are shorter challenges, including some that only last a week. However, in my opinion, these are far too short to have any meaningful impact on your fitness.

Some challenges increase in difficulty over the month, such as this popular progressive plank challenge. In contrast, others involve doing the same thing every day, e.g., running a mile a day for a month.

With so many challenges to choose from, you must weigh up the pros and cons of your chosen challenge before you begin. After all, your time and energy are valuable commodities, and I’d hate for you to waste them on something that doesn’t work.

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30-Day Fitness Challenges – The Good

It would be easy to dismiss most 30-day fitness challenges as a fad and waste of time. After all, getting fit, building muscle, losing weight, etc., usually takes many months and even years of consistent effort. You can’t really expect much from one month of exercise, right?

However, despite the short time frame, one-month fitness challenges are not entirely worthless and can provide numerous positive effects. These benefits include:

Motivation and Engagement

The time-bound nature of 30-day fitness challenges can create a high level of motivation and engagement. The one-month timeframe focuses your energy, while ticking off days and creating a streak of completed workouts will turn your motivation levels up to the max. Even if you find the challenge hard, knowing it’s just a month should help you stick with it. Also read: The Mental Side of Fitness: Staying Motivated Beyond January

Habit Forming

Getting and staying in shape requires a long-term commitment to exercise and good nutrition. The more habitual you can make your workouts, the easier you’ll find it to exercise regularly and consistently. Most successful exercisers don’t have to rely on willpower and motivation to work out – it’s virtually automatic.

Research suggests that it takes about 66-85 days to form a habit (1). While most fitness challenges are shorter than this, they provide a good starting point for cultivating the exercise bug.

Social Support

Many 30-day fitness challenges have online social support groups where participants can share their experiences and provide and receive encouragement. Some groups are started by the author of the challenge, providing support from the source. Alternatively, you can do a 30-day fitness challenge with friends, family, or colleagues.

Either way, this support can help you stay true to the cause, increasing the likelihood that you’ll complete the full 30 days.

Rapid Skill Development

Doing the same physical activity every day for a month will provide a level of practice and learning that are hard to get with less frequent workouts. For example, if you do 50 air-squats a day for a month, that’s 30 opportunities to practice and perfect your air-squat technique.

By the end of the month, you’ll have well and truly earned your air-squat “black belt” having done a massive 1500 reps! In contrast, with just one or two workouts per week, it’ll take you several months to match this volume.

Doing any activity every day will create the neural pathways that forge muscle memory. By the end of the month, you probably won’t even need to think about the movement you’ve been performing; it’ll be automatic and natural.

Noticeable Results

While your actual results will depend on the type of challenge you choose, as well as your adherence, diet, and training status, all fitness challenges should produce at least some noticeable benefits.

These probably won’t be as dramatic as most people hope, but they’ll still likely surpass what you can achieve in a regular month.

For example, running a mile a day for a month had a noticeable effect on my fitness, and I also lost three pounds. In contrast, doing 100 air squats a day made my legs more fatigue-resistant and a little more toned while improving my mobility. Similar gains normally take much longer to appear.

Future Workouts Should Feel Easier

As a former British Royal Marine Commando, I was often told, “Train hard to fight easy,” and “The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.” While somewhat melodramatic, these sayings help to explain why military training is so tough.

While no 30-day fitness challenges can compete with a 32-week Royal Marine bootcamp, the ongoing benefits are somewhat comparable. That’s because after exercising daily for a month, your regular 3-4 weekly workouts a week should feel considerably easier. In fact, returning to a more moderate workout program may even feel like a reward!

Satisfaction and Pride

Getting to the end of a 30-day fitness challenge deserves congratulations and celebrations. Even if you didn’t get the results you hoped for, completing a month-long challenge is still a fantastic achievement.

The satisfaction and pride you feel should last several weeks, improving your self-confidence and motivation to continue exercising, albeit on a more conventional program. Feel free to boast about your achievements on social media – you deserve it!

30-Day Fitness Challenges – The Bad and The Ugly

While fitness challenges can deliver worthwhile benefits, there are drawbacks, too. Consider the following before embarking on a new 30-day fitness challenge:

Sustainability Issues

The aim of any 30-day fitness challenge is to complete the entire thing with no breaks. Day in and day out, you need to “punch the clock” and get it done. However, doing the same thing every day can soon become boring, fatigue levels rise, and life may conspire to derail your efforts to be consistent.

Long story short, it’s not always possible or practical to work out for 30 days straight. Starting but failing to complete a 30-day fitness challenge can be demotivating and may even put you off future workouts.

While you should do your best to complete your 30-day fitness challenge, it’s essential to acknowledge that there are plenty of legitimate reasons for stopping before the end. In some cases, not continuing may be the smart choice, e.g., if you are ill or injured.

Don’t view this as a failure. Instead, learn from it and approach your fitness goals from a different, more sustainable angle.

Muscle Imbalances

Doing planks, push-ups, or air-squats every day might be good for the muscles involved in those exercises, but what about the rest of your body? Overtraining one muscle group while neglecting the rest of your body can cause muscle imbalances, affecting function and posture and even increasing the risk of injuries.

Consequently, I usually prefer to do 30-day challenges alongside a more balanced workout program. This helps prevent the imbalances you might otherwise experience doing the same exercise every day.

Injury Risk

From personal experience, I can tell you that doing the same exercise or activity every day for a month can cause aches and pains. That’s especially true when doing new or unusual exercises or high-impact activities, such as running, jumping rope, or burpees.

Make sure you listen to your body and learn to differentiate between the muscle soreness that comes from doing something new and a genuine injury. While you can ignore and work through the former, you should respect the latter, taking time off training if necessary.

In addition, make sure your chosen challenge matches your fitness level. Trying to do too much too soon is a fast track to injuries. Finally, check that you know how to do the exercise featured in the challenge and that your form is perfect. Poor technique increases the risk of injury.

Related: Fitness Volt Exercise Database  

No Personalization

While some fitness challenges offer levels, i.e., beginner, intermediate, and advanced, many do not. Therefore, it’s all too easy to start a challenge that doesn’t match your fitness or abilities.

So, while you may like the look of a particular fitness challenge, be realistic and ask yourself, “Can I really do that?” If you have any doubts, you should pick a less demanding challenge or modify the existing one to make it more manageable.

So, while a challenge should be, well, challenging, the odds of completing it should still be pretty high.

Short-Term Focus

There is no denying the potential benefits of some 30-day fitness challenges, but getting and staying in shape requires sustained, consistent effort. Unfortunately, you cannot store fitness, and any benefits from a 30-day fitness challenge will be lost if you don’t continue exercising afterward.

That’s not to say you should extend your 30-day fitness challenge, turning it into a 60, 90, or 120-day challenge. Instead, you should use a 30-day challenge as a springboard that launches you into a more conservative exercise program. Alternatively, you can run a fitness challenge alongside your usual workouts.

Either way, it’s critical to remember that short-term efforts produce short-lived results. The key to long-term fitness and health is consistency.

Closing Thoughts

30-day fitness challenges are a controversial subject. On the one hand, they can be motivating, empowering, and fun, often delivering noticeable short-term fitness benefits. However, on the other hand, 30 days is not long enough to produce lasting results. Additionally, doing the same exercise every day can cause muscle imbalances and injuries.

Whether you should attempt a 30-day fitness challenge depends on several factors, including your current fitness, exercise history, health status, and goals. Consider the advantages and benefits, compare them to any potential drawbacks and risks, and then decide if the challenge you are considering is worth your time and effort.

I like 30-day fitness challenges and have used them myself and with my clients. However, I also acknowledge that some challenges are better than others, and they’re not suitable for everyone.

Use the information in this article to weigh up the pros and cons of fitness challenges so you can decide if they’re right for you.

References:

1. Arlinghaus KR, Johnston CA. The Importance of Creating Habits and Routine. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2018 Dec 29;13(2):142-144. doi: 10.1177/1559827618818044. PMID: 30800018; PMCID: PMC6378489.

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