How to Build a Gym Buddy System to Help You Stay Accountable
Having an accountability buddy is a great way to help you accomplish your fitness and wellness objectives: they bring a healthy social pressure to show up to your workouts or to hit your activity goals. This accountability is particularly helpful if you’re a fitness beginner and don’t want to start your journey alone.
Here are a few steps you can take to find the right gym buddy and build a strong gym buddy system.
1. Decide on your goals.
Before you find someone to help you stay accountable to your goals, you need to figure out what your goals are. Do you want to get stronger, try new workouts, hit your daily activity goals more frequently, or lose weight?
There are many ways to measure success when it comes to fitness, so decide what matters most to you.
2. Find someone with similar goals. But be flexible.
Having an accountability buddy is great, but it's even better if you have someone with similar goals. You will have a more shared experience if you're aiming in the same direction. If two people want to do yoga 3 times a week, then you can schedule classes together, carpool together, or try new studios together.
It's going to be hard to find someone with the exact same objectives, so be flexible. You can find commonalities across your objectives if you’re creative. If one person's goal is to get to yoga 3 times a week, and the other person's goal is to put on 5 pounds of muscle, your experiences will be different as one person goes to yoga and the other lifts weights, but you can stay accountable by each committing to 3 workouts per week.
3. Focus on the Inputs.
It’s rare that any two people are in the same physical condition. If you’re at different fitness levels, don’t aim to achieve similar fitness outcomes.
Instead, focus on the inputs, not the outputs. Your mutual goals should be oriented around what each of you is putting in. For example, your goal shouldn’t be to run the same speed or burn the same calories, but to spend the same amount of time running or hit the calorie goal that matches your current abilities.
(Pantheon’s smart Personal Goals can help a lot with this. Each person gets their own activity goal tailored to their activity levels.)
4. Start Small.
One mistake people make in attempting any new goals is starting too big too soon. Starting small is one of the best ways to improve the odds that your new behavior sticks. This goes for your fitness goals and for your accountability expectations.
For example, instead of committing to 3 workouts together every week, you and your workout buddy can start with 1 workout together and 1 more workout on your own schedule.
Getting easy wins will help you feel good about your fitness habits and help you feel good about the accountability buddy system, making it more likely that you stick to it over a long term.
5. Schedule ahead, and put it on your calendar.
One of the most powerful methods for staying accountable is to tell friends that you will show up to something at a specific place and time (I use this as a trick to help me wake up earlier).
You can use this method with your accountability buddy. Don't wait for your schedules to open up. Sit down together and look at your schedules for a time that works for both of you, and put it on your calendars.
If you can't find a mutual time, you should agree to deadlines. For example, "Each of us will hit our daily step goal at least once before Wednesday at 3pm."
Make the commitment a firm one: it should only be re-scheduled under extreme circumstances.
6. Show up anyway.
Life happens, and inevitably, either you or your workout buddy will miss a goal. In these situations, the other person should stick to the objective anyway. This is good for both people! The person who hits their goal gets a win, and the person who doesn't gets an extra bit of motivation to make sure they hit the next one.
7. Keep it positive & fun.
Achieving your wellness goals can be stressful. Accountability buddies can be a great tool to make the process more fun, but you have to commit to staying positive.
You and your workout buddy should provide encouragement and kind words, never judgement or guilt-trips. You're agreeing to embark on a journey together, and just like having a travel partner, the trip is more enjoyable when you look for the positive in any challenges that come your way.
8. Use Pantheon as a way to track workouts with your gym buddy.
Pantheon is a free social fitness app perfect for gym buddies, workout buddies, or accountability buddies. Pantheon connects to your favorite fitness trackers and fitness apps, so you can track and share workouts even if you’re on different devices (like Fitbit, Apple Watch, and Garmin). You can see your friends accomplishments on their fitness profile, and send props when they hit their goals. If you want to stay accountable with more workout buddies, you can form a team and compete on who is completing the most challenges.