Why 30 Day Challenges Aren't All Bad
Takeaway Points:
30 day challenges are commonly mocked in the fitness industry for being a bad tool for developing sustainable, long-term fitness habits.
30 day challenges encourage short-term thinking, which is unlikely to help with long-term development.
However, it’s important to remember that long-term thinking is just a combination of all your periods of short-term thinking - and thus, sometimes, short-term thinking can set the right standard for your future behavior.
The Cons
If you’ve been in fitness for any length of time, you probably know about the thirty day challenge. It’s simple: you’re challenged to follow some predetermined workout routine that goes for some set period of time, usually 30, 60, or 90 days.
Often, these programs are pitched at beginners - things like Couch to 5k, 30 day squat challenges, and even P90X are variations on this structure. Their short duration, combined with their simplicity, is part of their appeal - they’re easy to share and easy to understand.
Most people follow a very particular rhythm when they start a new skill or lifestyle change for the first time - they have a lot of motivation at first, but then they hit some kind of rough patch usually within the first couple months or so. They may do pretty well for themselves, but they often drop off after that point. That’s why having a coach or some other kind of support system is super helpful - because you need a lot to power through that sticking point and keep making long term progress.
30 day challenges are mocked all the time for a very simple reason - they’re designed, by nature, to fail. These programs progress a bit through the month, but they don’t set you up for long term success in any real way. Since they’re preprogrammed to end before you get to the important work of seriously changing your habits long term, they leave you in the lurch right when you need the most guidance. Without long term adherence, you’ll quickly return to your old habits, and lose all of the progress you’ve made.
There are ways around that, of course. Some people might alternate different challenges, trying something new when the last one is finished. Some people might repeat the same challenges over and over - although this isn’t a good idea because it violates the principle of progression.
Another problem with these 30 day challenges is that they teach us bad habits. A 30 day squat challenge, for example, might have you perform 5 squats on day 1, 10 squats on day 2, 15 squats on day 3, and so on all the way up to 150 squats on day 30. But you can see the problem here - that while this strategy works pretty well in the short term, we definitely couldn’t keep progressing this in the long term - 300 squats after 2 months, 450 squats after three months - you get the idea. Linear periodization (where you add reps or weight consistently as a form of progression) can work - but not like that.
So it’s no surprise that 30 day challenges get a lot of hate in the fitness community. They’re short term, crash-exercise and crash-diet style programs that encourage harmful short-term thinking that sets you up for long-term failure.
The Pros
That said, there are plenty of times when we HAVE to think in the short term. When preparing for a bodybuilding competition or a powerlifting meet, for example, we sometimes have to take on short-term strategies in order to maximize performance, even when these strategies would be a poor method for training in the long term.
The lesson we can learn from that is that short term and long term thinking aren’t mutually exclusive. Sometimes, we can integrate short and long term thinking in innovative ways in order to achieve our total long term results. 30 day challenges are one of those possibilities.
Recently, a coach that I know and respect put on a 30 day challenge. I was initially confused - how could such a good coach use such a silly tool? But when I discussed it with him, the value of it quickly became clear.
He was using the 30 day challenge as a way to make use of that initial burst of optimism that all 30 day challenges do, but then instead of leaving his clients with nothing at the end of it, he was continuing to guide them through the process. He was treating this challenge like a jumpstart, and then properly transitioning these people into long-term plans afterwards, by offering long-term individual and group coaching services at the end of the challenge. In this way, those that made it through the challenge had proved that they were up to it, and he could focus on making those people into long term clients with proper long term habits.
In the same way, you can use a 30 day challenge in your own training - say, when you need to learn something new, or you have a short term goal that you want to meet before shifting back to focusing on your long term goals. For the same reason, a short crash diet can sometimes “work” to help break you out of your previous eating patterns before moving onto a more sustainable and longer term diet plan.
At the end of the day, your long term is made up of both larger, overarching goals and shorter ones that make those up.
Taking time off, trying something new, and getting a bit of variety in can still be useful so long as it doesn’t cause you to lose sight of your long term goals. Even elite athletes sometimes spend a month or two to just goof around and get a break from their usual training - even training in unrelated sports or training goals in order to get some practice in new movement skills.
A 30 day challenge can be a great tool - but only so long as you have a plan to follow it up. If you don’t, I can only emphasize that a short term program alone won’t accomplish much for you, and you’ll lose all that you’ve gained when you inevitably return to your former habits.
Real change takes time - and requires both short and long term planning.
About Adam Fisher
Adam is an experienced fitness coach and blogger who's been blogging and coaching since 2012, and lifting since 2006. He's written for numerous major health publications, including Personal Trainer Development Center, T-Nation, Bodybuilding.com, Fitocracy, and Juggernaut Training Systems.
During that time he has coached hundreds of individuals of all levels of fitness, including competitive powerlifters and older exercisers regaining the strength to walk up a flight of stairs. His own training revolves around bodybuilding and powerlifting, in which he’s competed.
Adam writes about fitness, health, science, philosophy, personal finance, self-improvement, productivity, the good life, and everything else that interests him. When he's not writing or lifting, he's usually hanging out with his cats or feeding his video game addiction.
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