Question: I read your article last week about starting a new life resolution instead of another New Years resolution. I really need to stick with it this time. Can you please help me? I always start good, but can’t stick to it. Leslie.

Answer: You are like millions of others who make New Years Resolutions to change their health and fitness. It’s great that you are starting a health and fitness routine, but the real goal is sticking to it and seeing constant results.

The most important part of seeing progress is doing a full body routine. Every body part must be worked equally every week to ensure that all muscle groups are progressing and some body parts aren’t being left behind.

It doesn’t take long to do a single set for each of your muscle groups. Here’s a list of muscle groups that need to be worked every week: upper back, chest, shoulders, biceps, triceps, abs, lower back and legs.

If you’re training your entire body whenever you do your resistance training program, only one set is required per body part to ensure that you have enough intensity and energy to make progress on all your body parts that you are training that day. Intensity, not volume, will give you constant progress, quality not quantity will give you constant progress.

If you’re working out hard and you have eight different body parts to train, it’s impossible to work with 100 percent intensity on more sets than one per muscle group.

Do one set for each body part on the first day, then rest one full day and do at least one more rep or a little more weight than you did the previous time and your body will respond by changing because of the new stimulus you showed it.

You are more likely to make it to the gym when you’re supposed to go. Short and to the point workouts guarantee that your using intensity on your exercises and keep the mental side of working out manageable as well. Your full body workout should only take 20-30 minutes at the most. Any longer means that you’re probably not working hard enough or doing too many sets per workout.

The longer that I am involved in health and fitness the more I convince myself that workouts need to be shorter, more consistent throughout the weeks and more intense then the time before to make progress.

Small steps repeated daily will achieve all your health and fitness goals.