You do not need a new plan for December. You need a smaller one. One or two sessions a week through the holidays will hold onto nearly everything you built this year — and that is a far lower bar than most people think they have to clear.
I have some version of this conversation every November, usually in the second or third week. Somebody comes in, stands there with their coat still on, and says they are probably going to be out for a while. Thanksgiving, then the grandkids are in, then there is a work thing, then it is Christmas. They are not asking me whether they should take December off. They have already decided. They are telling me gently so I am not offended.
What actually happens to people in December
Here is the thing I have watched for twelve years now: almost nobody quits in December. They pause. And the pause is the whole problem, because a pause has no end date written on it.
Two weeks becomes five. The January restart gets pushed to the second week because the first week is chaos. By the time somebody walks back in it is late January, they have lost the thread, and the first session back feels like starting over — which is demoralising in a way that has nothing to do with physiology and everything to do with how it feels to be a beginner twice.
The people who sail through December are not the disciplined ones. I want to be clear about that, because the disciplined-versus-lazy framing is both wrong and unkind. The ones who sail through are the ones who shrank the plan before the month started instead of abandoning it halfway through.
How little can you do and still keep what you have built?
Less than you would guess. The research on this is unusually tidy: you can cut your training volume substantially and hold onto strength for weeks, provided you keep the intensity. In plain terms, a short session where you still pick up something heavy does almost all the work of a full one.
So the December version of your program is not a watered-down version of the November one. It is two or three big movements, done properly, and then you leave. Twenty-five minutes. A hinge, a push, a carry. That is a session, and it is nothing like nothing.
One a week maintains. Two a week quietly keeps making progress. Zero a week is the only number that actually costs you something, and it is the number most people accidentally choose.
What we do differently here in December
We do not run a holiday challenge built on restriction, and we never will. Nobody needs a gym telling them what to eat at their own family’s table in the last week of December.
What we run instead is Sleigh The Holidays, from the day after Thanksgiving through Christmas Day. It is a bingo card. The squares are things like showing up, moving on a day you had not planned to, and a handful of small deliberately silly ones. The point of it is not the prize. The point is that a bingo card gives you a reason to come in on a Tuesday in mid-December when there is no other reason to, and showing up on that specific Tuesday is the entire difference between a pause and a continuation.
The other thing we do is simply keep the doors open on a normal schedule, including the awkward weeks. Coraopolis runs sessions from six in the morning, and both studios keep Saturday mornings. If your week falls apart, there is almost always a slot that still fits in it.
Frequently asked questions
Should I just take December off and start fresh in January?
No, and I would push back on this harder than on almost anything else people ask me. A January restart costs you four to six weeks of rebuilding to get back where you already are today. Two short sessions a week through December costs you under an hour. The arithmetic is not close.
What about the week of Christmas?
Write that week off on purpose, in advance, and put it in the calendar as a planned week off rather than a failure. A planned week off is training. An unplanned one is the start of a drift. The distinction sounds like semantics and it is not — one has a return date and the other does not.
I am travelling for ten days. What do I do?
Carry something heavy, get up and down off the floor, and walk. That is genuinely it. You are not trying to make progress on a trip, you are trying to arrive home not having to start over. Tell us before you go and we will give you three movements you can do in a hotel room without equipment or embarrassment.
Is it worth starting in December, or should I wait for January?
December is the best month of the year to start and the one nobody picks. The gym is quieter, you get more coaching attention, and by the time the January crowd arrives you are six weeks in and past the part that feels awkward. Starting in January means starting alongside everybody else at their most anxious.
Will two sessions a week really be enough?
For maintaining through a five-week stretch, comfortably. Two sessions a week is also where most of our members live year-round, and they are not maintaining — they are improving. The small group format exists mostly so that two a week is affordable instead of aspirational.
Where to start
If you are already training with us, come talk to me or Chelsea about shrinking your December on purpose rather than by accident. It takes two minutes and it is the single most useful conversation you will have this month.
If you are not, and you have been waiting for January: start with a Starting Point Session. It is an appointment rather than a workout — forty-five minutes to an hour, no training and no pitch. We talk about what you have stopped doing, I run you through the Starting Point Assessment, and you leave with it written down whether you ever train here or not.
It is free. We hold the spot with a fifty-dollar deposit that comes off your program if you start and comes back to you if you decide we are not for you.
Book in Coraopolis — 409 Mulberry Street
Book in Lawrence — 108 Commerce Blvd, Suite C
