STEPN - “Maxxing” Your Gains

This 2023, maximise your STEPN experience.

Want to get the most out of your STEPN app? Today, we’ve gathered some tips to focus on how to leverage the power of habits to maximise your fitness returns.

A Clear Path Forward

We’ve based today’s tips from James Clear’s Atomic Habits, a guide to forming and maintaining good habits, and breaking bad ones. Clear’s advice is based on the idea that small, incremental changes to our habits can lead to significant improvements in our lives.

Atomic Habits has sold more than 9 million copies worldwide and is a #1 New York Times bestseller. It’s also been featured in places like Time magazine, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and on CBS This Morning — and for good reason. Many people cite the book as a catalyst for changing their lives for the better.

The Five Cues

As Clear lays out, the process of building a good habit can be divided into four steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. This forms a habit loop that looks something like this.

There are five primary ways that a new habit can be triggered: time, location, preceding event, emotional state, and other people. By using these cues, you can pick a trigger that creates your habit loop.

Now let’s apply these principles to STEPN!

Timing

Time is a great way to trigger a new habit, and is probably the most common one of all. For example, many people fall into routines of brushing teeth, going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and drinking coffee when it’s morning-time.

In the same way, you can harness time to make it easier to do your STEPNing. For example, you can set an alarm every day for 5:00PM once you’re finished with work to get up and take a walk outside with your sneakers. It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel like it or even if you don’t take a very long walk or run. All that matters is that you stick to the schedule.

Soon enough, you’ll begin naturally associating 5:00PM with your time to get outdoors and get moving — creating a great cue everyday that you can rely on.

Location/Environment

Location and environment is one of the most powerful drivers of habits there are. By linking a habit to a particular location, it becomes easier to remember and perform consistently. And, it can be easier to imagine and crave.

One way you can do this with your STEPN habit is by finding good spaces to walk in your neighborhoods. It can be much more pleasant to walk or run around in parks with natural greenery like trees, flowers, and shrubs, than in an area with more concrete and asphalt.

Preceding Event

Often, “habit stacking” can be a great way to build a new habit into a routine that you already do every day. You can pick something that you already know that you do without fail — like eating a meal — and add in a habit afterwards to signal yourself to start the habit.

We’ve heard many users say that they like to walk after dinner to digest their food. The added benefit is that this is scientifically proven to be good for you! Scientists have found that going for a 15-minute walk after a meal can reduce blood sugar levels, which can help ward off complications such as Type 2 diabetes.

Emotional State

Emotions are very common cues for our behavior. We all feel low or bored sometimes, and this can lead to actions that we might consider “bad habits,” like overeating or online shopping.

But, the next time you’re feeling low or bad, you could turn it into a positive by using this as a cue to start a STEPN session. And, to continue with the myriad benefits of walking,

An Accountability Partner

Finally — and this might be our favorite — the people you surround yourself with can play a big role in your habits and behaviors. Even better, if you’re able to find yourself an accountability partner that you can STEPN with, you’ll be unstoppable! Researchers have found that people are 65% more likely to meet a goal after committing to another person.

Conclusion

Ultimately, what habit cue works best will depend on your routines and lifestyle. You can try different ones out and see what sticks and what doesn’t. You can even combine multiple to really bolster the strength of your habit. And you can even get creative and come up with new ones of your own — we can’t wait to see what you innovate!