As summer comes to an end and we head back into the realms of normality — school runs, returning to work after holidays, routines starting up again, or simply that end of summer feeling — there can be a huge temptation to decide that everything needs to change.
Completely restructure your life. Overhaul your diet. Start training five days a week. Perhaps throw in a marathon whilst simultaneously becoming a CrossFitter and a bodybuilder.
Or… you could just regroup.
Make a few tweaks. Find your routine again. Start moving forward without feeling like everything has to change overnight.
But once you’ve found your feet again, there’s another question worth asking:
How do you want to END 2026?
Not what do you want to start in January. Not what will your New Year’s resolution be.
How do you want to feel when you arrive there?
REFLECT.
Think back to the end of 2025. How were you feeling physically? How were your energy levels? Were you exercising regularly, or had it all disappeared somewhere amongst Christmas parties and Quality Street? Were you looking after yourself, or were you permanently putting yourself at the bottom of the list?
What worked well last year? What didn’t? And what would you genuinely like to be different this time around?
Reflection isn’t about beating yourself up over what you didn’t do. It’s simply about recognising where you were, what’s changed and what you might want to do differently with the months ahead.
VISUALISE.
Fast-forward to December 2026 and picture what a really good end to the year looks like for you.
Think about how you want to feel, what you want your weeks to look like and what you’d like to have achieved or changed by then.
This doesn’t have to be a huge transformation or an impressive goal. You don’t need to arrive at Christmas as a completely different person. It’s simply about being able to get to the end of December, look back over the last few months and think:
“Yeah, I’m pleased with that.”
What would need to be different for you to be able to say that?
TAKE ACTION.
Now work backwards.
What needs to happen between here and there?
Think about your training, your movement, your food, your sleep, your routines and the amount of time you actually give to yourself. What could you do more consistently and what have you been putting off? What keeps slipping when life gets busy? And, importantly, what actually matters enough to you to do something about it?
You don’t need to change twelve things at once. In fact, choosing the one or two things that would genuinely make the biggest difference and doing them consistently over the next few months will probably get you much further than another all-or-nothing overhaul.
You don’t need to wait for January.
We put so much emphasis on January as the time to set goals, make changes and start again that it’s easy to mentally write off the last few months of the year.
But there’s still plenty of 2026 left.
Plenty of time to build a routine. Plenty of time to get stronger, move more, feel better, improve your habits or simply start prioritising yourself a little more often.
So rather than waiting for a new year to decide what you want to change, ask yourself a different question:
How do I want to END this one?
Think. Visualise. Take action.
SAMPLE 10 MINUTE WORKOUT – KETTLEBELL CORE