Over the past year, we have all been through a tremendous amount of change in how we work, live, and take care of ourselves.

We have all spent a lot more time doing things on our own, and a lot less time around a lot of our friends, colleagues, and family. This time has shown us how important community really is for us and for our physical and mental wellbeing. Having a community means we also have things like support, accountability, motivation, good advice, and a sense of not being alone. When it comes to sports and fitness, the community is critical for helping to reach your health and fitness goals. Teams can encourage you to work harder, run faster, and reach levels of motivation that you never knew you had. If you aren’t already part of a community for training, whether for a team sport, running, or a communal gym, the tips in this article will help you build one.

What Is A Community?

A community is a group of like-minded people who come together with shared core values, who both give and get energy from their group, and are actively engaged in and working towards individual and collective goals. A community can be just a few people, such as a group of friends who agree to go to the gym together, or a lot of people, such as an organised running group. If the kind of community for fitness that you are looking for doesn’t yet exist, you can build it yourself, with minimal effort.

Tips To Build Your Own Community

There are lots of ways to find, become a part of, and even build your own community to create a place where you and other like-minded individuals can come together to work towards your goals. Whether you join a running group, or find a platform for personal training community for trainers to meet and share experiences online.

Establish Your Values

To get started with your community, you need to first identify and establish your core values. Think carefully about what kind of community you want to be able to give and get energy from. What are your values when it comes to relationships, social issues, and your life in general? What are some of your main wellness goals or interests? For example, if you are a runner who really loves nature, cares about the environment, and is interested in empowering others like yourself, such as women or members of the LGBTQ+ community with an interest in your sport, then you might want a community designed to support these interests alongside your fitness goals. Knowing what your values are will help you identify what kind of community you might want to join, build, and share to help you reach your goals.

Decide How You Want To Communicate

Find out what platform or platforms you want to use to find or build this ideal community that you have already identified. At this stage, it’s better to keep things simple so you don’t get confused or overwhelmed. For example, you could choose one digital social platform to meet people on, such as Instagram, and one fitness app, such as a training app. You can create all your messaging on the digital social platform and then use the fitness tracking app to keep track of your progress. If this works for you, you could add on other options, like a personalised app, a newsletter, or in-person meet-ups later on too. Think carefully about you want to interact with your community, and seek out the best option that can accommodate that.

Commit To A Schedule

It is important to create some boundaries for how much time you want to spend on the digital platform that you have chosen for your fitness community, and how much time you want to dedicate to your fitness goals in real life. In the first phases of excitement, it can be easy to accidentally sink hours into the digital community, get burnt out, and neglect your actual fitness progress. You also don’t want to let yourself get stretched too thin, with too many demands on your time from something that is supposed to be supportive and fun for you. For example, you could commit to spending three hours out of one day a week to check in with your group, doing a virtual or in-person workout session, and creating a post about it.

Be Consistent

Make sure that you keep your communication and the time your spend on your fitness goals consistent and regular. Making small steps consistently will add up to something much bigger over time. For example, with your new group, you could plan that you will run together, in person or on a video call, two miles once a week, on a consistent day at a consistent time. On your own, plan to run or walk two more miles on other days during the week. This routine will help you to meet your goals, and give you some motivation of knowing others are expecting you to turn up!

Don’t Forget To Celebrate

Share your progress by creating a hashtag for your group, so that you can all use it to share photos and videos of your journey. You never know who else you might be able to inspire along the way. You could all share parts of your journey using the same hashtag, which you can all use to find each other on Instagram. If you are using a brand’s training app, you can usually use a share feature to easily post your workouts in your group chat or on your social media profile.

Creating or joining a community could be what makes the real difference when it comes it holding yourself accountable to your fitness and wellness goals, being inspired or motivated by others, and developing what could be long-lasting friendships with people with similar interests and goals. You can go further together, and help each other to move forward.