Kadie Glenn knew she needed to increase her weekly running cadence if she wanted to meet her goal of completing a marathon in the beginning of 2026. The 28-year-old in London found a solution on TikTok when she came upon the Great Lock In.
“The Great Lock In is really about you defining what moves the needle for you and giving yourself permission to pursue that in a way that’s sustainable and scalable over time,” she said of the challenge that has gained steam on social media in recent weeks.
Ms. Glenn is one of the many social media users participating in the Great Lock In, which, much like other popular internet challenges such as 75 Hard or the Winter Arc, encourages people to follow specific regimens for shorter bursts of time, in hopes that they will be more likely to meet their goals.
In this case, people doing the Great Lock In began on Sept. 1 (a date that some on social media noted fell, aptly, on a Monday), and are meant to work toward their goals through the remainder of 2025, rather than treating the goals as New Year’s resolutions.
“It’s just about hunkering down for the rest of the year and doing everything that you said you’re going to do,” said Tatiana Forbes, a content creator whose video on her own plans for the challenge gained traction on TikTok.
Unlike other popular challenges, the Great Lock In isn’t restricted to fitness goals, Ms. Forbes, 31, said. She set her sights on reaching 100,000 followers on Instagram and running two marathons before the year’s end.
The challenge also helped itself by tapping into language trends, as use of the phrase “lock in” has grown rapidly recent years, with Google’s analytics indicating the term is being searched more now than it ever has been in the past.
The term is “all over the place,” according to Kelly Elizabeth Wright, an assistant professor of language sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who said she hears it being used by both students and friends.
“I think that we live in an era where it’s very easy to be distracted and that we’re on our phones a lot,” she said. “‘Lock in’ really came up in these last couple years where people are saying, like, ‘I have to make myself focus. I have to get into a state where I am free from distraction to accomplish, essentially, anything.’”
“Lock in” was voted the “most useful” term of 2024 by the American Dialect Society, which defined it as “to enter a state of deep focus and concentration.”
Dr. Wright, who is the lead editor of Among the New Words, a dictionary that is part of the American Dialect Society’s quarterly journal, American Speech, said that words often win in that category when they’re widespread, and put a label on an experience people commonly understand.
“A lot times they’re a term where it’s like, ‘I was already doing this or feeling this but I didn’t really have a word for it,’” she said.
Latrice Littleton, 41, said she first heard the phrase from her teenage daughter several years ago. Since, it has become a regular part of their shared vocabulary, and a way of motivating each other, she said.
“There are moments in your life where you need to just tune out the noise and zone in on something,” Ms. Littleton said, adding, “I find that saying that really gives me in the mode of like, ‘OK, it’s time to get things done.’ And it can be really empowering.”
And as for whether she’s participating in the Great Lock In? “Always,” she said.
Nicole Stock reports on internet culture and other lifestyle news for the Style section of The Times.
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