Inspiration or Exasperation? How Social Media Affects Your Fitness

we went through the COVID lockdown, social media was often our only source of connection. From making banana bread and canning cool again to sourcing at-home workouts online, social media offered a wealth of interaction and highlighted what everyone else was doing while in lockdown. Many even bought fitness equipment like Pilates reformers and weight benches to maintain their fitness while stuck at home.

Although social media can be a fun source of information and ideas, it can also discourage you on your fitness journey or even offer you bad advice. While it may be difficult to know for certain the difference between worthy and worthless fitness advice, this post details some tips on how to structure your social media surfing so that you maintain the right perspective and stay motivated to use your Pilates equipment properly.

How to Keep Social Media Motivating

With unprecedented access to information, you may find yourself off track with your fitness because you just don’t know where to begin or what direction to take. So use social media to keep you on your Pilates reformer; don’t let it keep you guessing. Follow these tips to keep your motivation in overdrive using all that social media has to offer:

• Find accountability and support. When you’re setting goals, no matter how simple, you can join groups on social media that can support you. Maybe you need to check in each day and confirm that you got your workout in or maybe you need to see how people with a similar lifestyle work in a Pilates session each day. Regardless of your needs, you can find a group to support you.
• Trust the professionals. When it comes to information about using your Pilates equipment, not everyone is trained properly to use let alone teach someone else to use it. So stick to professional advice. With a Frame reformer, you can stream your workouts directly to your Pilates reformer, which is like putting a pro in your home to give you a one-on-one session in your custom settings.
• Get inspired with new ideas. Be mindful of the difference between inspiration and comparison. Regardless of which platform is your favorite, social media offers countless ways to get inspired and stay motivated. New ideas and inspiring pics can keep you motivated and encouraged to stay on track. Avoid comparing your success to that of others, but use it to stay excited about your path. From reading inspiring stories to watching challenging new flows, let the success of others boost your motivation to keep moving.
• Research the facts. Not all information grounds itself in facts. When you need to check the validity of a statement, you can research authoritative sites—those that end in .org or .edu. When you see nutrition advice you want to follow or new facts about burning fat you never read before, make certain that professionals and researchers in that industry can support such claims with peer-reviewed research.

Maintaining Perspective with Social Media

Social media has proven its power to influence others, but how that influence impacts each individual differs. For some, social media hurts their health goals, but for others, social media actually helps them with their health goals. How social media will impact you depends on your perspective, not just your perspective of how you view and use social media but also your perspective of how you view yourself.

A Pilates reformer enhances your mind-body connection and can help build positive feelings about you and your body to help you avoid the comparisons that often get made with social media content. Using Pilates equipment can help you maintain a positive mindset because

• Working out releases endorphins. Those feel-good feelings erupt after a challenging session on your Pilates equipment. So remember that working out feels good and makes you feel good about yourself and your accomplishments.
• Pilates builds a mind-body connection. The mind-body connection you develop with Pilates improves how you look at your body. Just like getting to know someone helps you understand them better, Pilates enriches your understanding of your body. You begin to understand how and why you move in certain ways, and you build an appreciation for your unique self.
• You can improve your mindfulness. You have so much to focus on while using your Pilates equipment. From maintaining a neutral pelvis and breathing properly to processing cues and relaxing your shoulders, you’ll find it difficult to practice Pilates if you’re not focused. Pilates allows you to practice and improve your mindfulness. You learn to focus on the present and what is affecting your body and leave everything else out. That skill is useful in all parts of your life, especially when scrolling through social media. You can be mindful of your needs and goals and wall off competing thoughts that throw you off track.
• Pilates releases stress. When you work out on your Pilates reformer, you give your body a challenging, complete-body workout. Working out gives you a safe space to see how your body deals with stress as well as ways to overcome it. In doing so, you not only release stress while you work out, you understand how to better handle stress when it comes your way.

Social media has so much to offer, but because it offers so much it’s hard to wade through the ocean of information, ideas, and advice. If social media tends to keep you in a state of discouragement and constant comparison, try using these tips to keep the right perspective:

• Keep it lighthearted and fun. Allow yourself to be lighthearted when looking at content, but don’t take it to heart. Posts that negatively call out behaviors, label habits, or position choices as good or bad can be discouraging. Feel empowered to laugh at yourself, if you want, when you note a bit of truth in those posts, but remind yourself that fitness is personal. What works to empower and motivate one person doesn’t work for the unique makeup of another, including you.
• Stay grounded. If you find yourself playing the comparison game, remember how structured and staged social media posts can be. When you see a staged social media post, you may unknowingly assume that this person looks this way all the time or has success 100 percent of the time. Remember that no matter how effortless someone claims to have been to achieve success, the real value of success is in the journey and what you learn along the way, not necessarily the end result.
• Avoid following people that discourage you. Although this may seem obvious, it may be more difficult than you think. To maintain your health and well-being, unfollow anyone that consistently discourages you from following the fitness path that works for you. Unfollowing someone doesn’t mean that they are bad or wrong; it just means that what they represent is wrong for you at this moment. Make your health take top priority.
• Limit your time. With so much online, you can easily follow an endless amount of rabbit trails and still end up with not much to show for it. Being mindful of your time on social media instead of mindlessly scrolling or searching can help you maintain the right focus. Target something specific to search instead of scrolling through content. Give yourself a specific amount of time to look for that content and don’t allow yourself to get sidetracked.
• Maintain focus. With the mountain of advice and pictures of super-fit individuals rolling through your feed, you can easily get distracted and off track. If you see a post and start thinking that you need to do whatever that person is doing so that you can look like them, be mindful of your journey. Fitness is specific to you. Not only will your physical and mental health needs differ from others, but also your path to get to the next level in your fitness journey will look different.
• Fast from social media. If your health is hindered, not helped, by social media, take part in a social media fast. Give yourself a limited time to avoid social media altogether to give yourself a mental health break and to keep yourself on track with your personal fitness goals.

From social media challenges and fitness fads to news updates and nutrition, social media offers endless opportunities for lighthearted fun and interesting new information. Maintaining a balance with your social media use can make the difference between staying motivated to work out and getting discouraged with your progress. A healthy, positive workout regimen with a Pilates reformer can help keep you positive and focused so that you can filter out the white noise that throws you off your overall fitness goals.