Boston’s Most Popular Fitness New Year’s Resolutions

Research suggests that more than 45 percent of people in the U.S. make New Year’s resolutions, but only 8 percent achieve their goals. Even worse? A lousy 25 percent only make it a week. Don’t let that be you.

We asked some of Boston’s most popular studios to divulge how they handle their client’s New Year’s resolutions and what tips they offer to make those resolution dreams a reality.

Photo provided.

Barry’s Bootcamp Boston

For Dustin Martin and Brian Weller, co-owners and trainers at Barry’s Bootcamp Boston, hearing the clichéd, “I want to be healthier” resolution doesn’t induce eye-rolling. “As trainers, we light up when we hear these kinds of resolutions,” Martin says. “They’re much more achievable than something like ‘I want to have a six-pack’ or ‘I want to be thinner.'”

What’s the most outlandish resolution ever brought to Barry’s? The goal of coming to the gym 300 times in a single year. It was off track by the first week in February.

Weller says that the broader goal of a healthier life includes more than a few trips to the gym. “We’ve found that people who have tunnel vision with small goals generally have a tougher time getting to their end goal–mainly because fitness is a journey, not a destination,” Weller says.

No matter what you want to achieve, Martin says to write down your goal and put it on the coffee pot or a place where you will see it every day. “Writing it down turns it from a hope into a goal. [It] turns it from the abstract to the tangible,” he says.

30 Chauncy Street, Boston, 857-350-4019, barrysbootcamp.com/boston

Photo provided.

CrossFit Boston

At CrossFit Boston in Allston, you may not see the traditional New Year’s membership growth. “There is a little bit of a bump,” says founder and owner Neil Thompson, “but it’s not the same sort of thing you would see with, say, a Boston Sports Club.” As Thompson explains, CrossFit is hard. Each of CrossFit’s high-intensity training programs work with strength and conditioning to increase your power, and they aren’t for the faint of heart. There’s also no “deals” for the New Year at many CrossFit boxes.

Thompson says that the most common resolution at his box isn’t to get healthier; it’s to decrease alcohol consumption. (A work hard, play hard clientele, perhaps?) He says that people come to him in the new year with the goal of cutting back on their drinking, and his solution is the 80/20 rule. Monday through Friday is all about eating well and getting lots of water, but the weekends are fair game. “If you go out on a Saturday night, just enjoy yourself,” Thompson says, “or if you go to a buddy’s house to watch the game on Sunday, enjoy yourself, but the rest of the days, just drinking lots of water and no alcohol.”

114 Western Avenue, Allston, 617-903-4658, crossfitboston.com

Photo via Pure Barre.

Pure Barre

“I think that everybody sets resolutions, whether or not they actually made the conscious decision to,” says Lauren Marett Sherman, the owner of Pure Barre on Newbury St. “I think that people have that mindset. [It’s a] New Year, they want to start fresh.”

Classes at this barre studio center around both general fitness and intensive-focus. “The major trouble spots that we work are the ones we hear the most,” Sherman says. “People say, you know, I want to work on my butt, or I want to slim down my thighs, I want to tone my arms, my abs, so they’re the trouble spots that we generally work.” Though the barre classes do work on flexibility, Sherman says that people are looking more to tone and tighten up, so that is what the studio focuses on.

While many people come to Pure Barre with the resolution to get in shape, just as many are looking to feel better. Rather than setting lofty goals for the year, clients are simply hoping to feel good. “People do come in and they say, ‘Am I going to lose weight here?’ and we always tell them that consistency is key,” Sherman says. “Setting smaller goals that are more attainable will keep you coming in and put you on the right road to feeling better.”

350 Newbury Street, 617-247-5360, purebarre.com/ma-boston

Photo provided.

Baptiste Yoga

Kelly Holzcheiter, brand manager at Baptiste, says that people do come in with specific goals, whether it’s losing weight, getting exercise on a consistent basis, or just to de-stress. The common theme, she says, is that people often make a resolution to do something for themselves. “People’s lives are so busy and, often, doing things for other people–especially as mothers and fathers–and doing something for themselves comes second,” Holzcheiter says.

But at yoga studios, it’s about more than just the physical. While Baptiste does see more people with the new year, and people come in with specific resolutions, the studio focuses on the lifelong nature of the practice. For Holzcheiter, resolutions often get people in, but the influx in January is about getting people to stay. “As a practitioner, you get the most out of it the more consistently you come and the more often that you come, and so we really speak to that throughout the year,” she says.

At the Cambridge location, Baptiste will offer a two hour New Year’s eve class beginning at 10 p.m., so you can usher in the New Year in a healthy way and get started on your resolution before the year even begins.

25 Harvard Street, Brookline, 617-232-9642; 2000 Massachussetts Avenue, Cambridge, 617-661-6565, baronbaptiste.com/the-boston-studios