Couple goals

If you want to build an emotional bond with your partner, tweak your fitness goals and workout together for a healthy relationship, writes Anjali Sareen

What do celebrity couples Virat Kohli-Anushka Sharma, Bipasha Basu-Karan Singh Grover, Mila Kunis-Ashton Kutcher and Gisele Bundchen-Tom Brady have in common? They surely believe that couples that sweat together, stay together. They have upped their fitness quotient by sharing workouts or being supportive of each other’s fitness programmes.

With demanding and hectic lifestyles impacting our health and relationships, couple fitness goals have become very popular. There is something about sharing with each other — the hard work, struggles and achievements of working out that go a long way in building trust and respect for one another.

Working out and getting stronger together helps create an emotional bond. Staying the course with your health and fitness goals requires commitment and effort. Sharing these goals with each other can help couples not only achieve their fitness goals but also helps to build a stronger relationship between them.

There are many benefits of training with your significant other:

Staying motivated

Working out with each other ensures you have someone who knows you well and so knows how best to motivate you and help you stay on track.

More effort for better results

Working out with one another encourages you to put in more effort. On days when you want to give up or not put in your best — knowing your partner is watching helps to keep the focus and effort on.

Stronger relationships

Time spent together working out leads to better bonds that encourage working as a team, especially if you’re training together for a race or event.

Higher romantic quotient

Working out together can energise and rejuvenate your relationship on an emotional and physical level.

Shared activity-specific goals

Working out now is not limited to goals of losing weight or gaining muscle. Sports, outdoor activities and active holidays are leading to a new set of fitness goals.

Active holidays based on trekking, cycling, water-sports, to name a few, are very popular to-do getaways for couples.

Getting fitness-ready with a fun holiday goal in mind makes for a great reason for partners to plan their workout time together.

Running and cycling are popular common goal fitness programmes for couples. Exercising outdoors and training together for a 5K, a marathon or a cycling race is a great way to enjoy one another’s company.

Increasingly, if one partner is already into a sport or activity, the other feels motivated to also be able to participate in the same activity, promoting together time. In fact, many times couples would have first met through these common interests involving outdoor activities or sports.

Sharing a fitness programme with specific goals/events in mind helps build memories that lead to deeper bonds.

Finding the balance

Having made fitness a couple goal, the next step would be deciding on the workout to do, which can be daunting and often leads to couples giving up even before they get started. This need not be the case. Training for the same event (like a run) or a holiday activity makes it simple to be able to train together. However, if partners have different goals or fitness-related interests, it can feel difficult to schedule workouts together.

Functional fitness workouts can be ideal for such couples. Functional training involves total body workouts that include important elements such as core-strengthening, stability, balance, power and injury prevention. These workouts are varied, challenging, and can be adapted to varied fitness levels of both partners as needed. The added bonus — the benefits of such workouts provide an advantage in other workouts or sports that either partner may be doing individually.

Having different fitness goals and workouts need not mean having to give up on couple fitness goals. The workouts may be different but scheduling them for the same time can lead to a shared activity between the couple that involves going and returning together and spending time discussing their individual workout highs and lows.

To enjoy fitness as a couple-goal, keeping in mind your partner’s individual space can go a long way towards making it lasting and successful. Bear in mind the following:

Shared interest

The idea behind working out together is the time spent with each other doing an activity that both enjoy. Insisting on doing activities that both do not enjoy will only lead to dissatisfaction, with one or the other giving up.

We’re all not made equal. When working out as a couple, it’s important to remember that the strength and fitness will not necessarily be equal for both. Instead of becoming discouraged or frustrated, couples should think of creating bonds through learning from one another and, engaging in some healthy competition is a great way to stay motivated.

Keep some space

Keep in mind, it is not necessary to engage in all your workouts together — there may be activities that one enjoys but the other doesn’t. Remember to give each other space and time to follow individual interests too — this will in fact make the workouts done together more fun and special.

Staying fit and healthy together — in mind and body — can energise your relationship in the most wonderful way. So, get started — find that common fitness goal that gets you both to move together and add another spark to the bond you share with each other.

(The author is co-owner,
The Zone, Mind & Body Studio)