Forget New Year's Resolutions. BAM instead!
- Chris
- Dec 31, 2025
- 5 min read
We've all been there - a New Year's resolution to be more regular with our running, follow our training plan more, do more strength training, stretch more. If you have, you're in good company. A 2025 survey of over 1,200 Canadians revealed that 48% of them made New Year's resolutions and 71% of them were health or fitness related (exercise more, change eating habits, lose weight.) Another survey asked 1,000 participants how long they stuck to their 2024 New Year's resolutions. This survey found that the average resolution lasts on average 3.74 months. Only 8% of respondents tend to stick with their goals for one month, while 22% last two months, 22% last three months and 13% last four months meaning by the time 🅿️☠️🅿️ rolls around in April, 65% of people will have abandoned their New Year's resolutions!
It's actually not your fault, we're psychologically wired to fail using this approach. There is a way to reach your desired goal however by leveraging the plasticity of your brain. It's called "habit stacking."
No Matter Your Age, Your Brain Can Still Learn.
The old adage that "you can't teach an old dog new tricks," might apply to dogs, but it is the complete opposite for humans. Neuroplasticity, or brain plasticity, is the brain's remarkable ability to reorganize and adapt its structure and function in response to experiences, learning, and injury.
James Clear, author of "Atomic Habits," writes that by anchoring new behaviours to existing habits, called "habit stacking," we can strengthen neural pathways, making the new behavior more automatic and less effortful. This works with our existing brain architecture, where repetition, reward, and context are key to habit formation.
Why BAM is better than NYR
New Year's resolutions require motivation and willpower. The way these mechanisms operate are like a limited resource: the more we use them, the less available they are. It is difficult on a long enough timeline to have consistent motivation and willpower to overcome all impacts on our time and energy and eventually you'll need a break from that approach. If it happens enough, you might think you've failed at your resolution, and that added mental load is certainly not good for your motivation!
Habit stacking however, gets easier the more you repeat the behaviour. This technique reduces the mental load of decision making and leverages our tendency towards routine. The more you repeat the behaviour over time, the more it can become consistent and automatic.
The concept of "Bare Ass Minimum," in exercise is to decide on something that you will do at the very least. Set the bar low so that it is always achievable. Use the formula of: what, when, and how often.
Here's some examples:
What
30 minutes of stretching
a 30 minute walk with the dog
one 20 minute yoga video
When
before work
at lunch
at least before bed
How Often
every 1 of 2 days
6 days a week
Losing Motivation Over Winter
Winter is full of adversity, from ice storms (Ontario last week), to snow storms that lengthen our commute to the gym, darker days and abysmally cold temperatures (Ontario this week) and there it sits, your poor New Year's resolution needing more and more motivational energy as winter goes on.
BAM doesn't require you to overcome adversity - it just requires you to be consistent with action. Because your BAM becomes habit, your motivational stores will be full when a nice day comes along and you can tap into that motivation to put up more intense training.
Creative Director Chris's BAM
At the beginning of 2025 with no races on the immediate horizon, I set a New Year's resolution to stay healthy even with no planned races. To me, this loosely meant running 10k, 4-5 times a week, which was normally pretty easy. Unfortunately, when combined with gearing up for the cold, this could mean a commitment of 90 minutes to get it done. Then the days started getting really cold, and forget about going outside on those days! By February, the lack of consistency made it so that 10k was hard and quite painful to recover from. By March, the aversion to committing to the time required for a 10k and apprehension of how sore I'd be caused me to be in a fitness slump. I was out of shape, overweight and the unhealthiest I'd ever been in my entire life. So much for the New Year's resolution!
Over the summer, races provided fuel for my motivation tank, but I didn't want to fall off a fitness cliff again this winter! So I defined a BAM of at least 30 minutes of activity a day, 6 days a week.
What - 30 minutes of any activity: stretching, strength, walking, running.
When - Before 5pm every day.
How Often - 6 of 7 days a week.
It started slowly. On the first day of my commitment to BAM, I laid on a yoga mat on the floor and stared at the ceiling - but I did it for 30 minutes! The second day was similar but 10 minutes in I started stretching. That turned into strength training, 30 minutes at first, but some days 45 minutes, then runs outside, even in the cold. I compare how effortless it is to step outside these days knowing that it might just be for 30 minutes, or it might lead to a 10k, and I compare that with how much I dreaded the exact same exercise last March.
Fast forward to today and my BAM is always there in the background helping me stay active, even when my motivation isn't there, thanks to habit stacking. I won't kick off a training plan for a while, but when that motivation comes, I'll be ready, because I'm staying active and making sure I'm not starting from zero.
Race Director Rhonda's BAM
Rhonda has perfected the art of habit stacking and in addition to her BAM of taking the long way home from work, on her days off she'll do 10 push-ups every time she uses the bathroom. By the end of a regular day she says she gets 70 push-ups and it's become very doable. When she has motivation, she switches out to using weights and has recently stacked dedicated strength training on her routine. When she started she was using 5lb weights and now 8 months later she's using up to 20lbs. Rhonda's BAM also includes 30 minutes of Yoga a day, at least 4 days a week.
What | When | How Often |
Take the long way home from work | After work | On days when she works |
10 push-ups | After a bathroom break | On days when she's off |
30 minutes of yoga | Daily | 4 days a week |
Join us in staying active this winter!
If you're on Facebook you can join our group, the 🅿️☠️🅿️ Bare A$$ Minimums and discuss your BAM, how you're doing this winter with training and even swear a little bit about the weather. Check it out and we look forward to BAM'ing with you!
Comments