You’ve set a goal and you know you want to get somewhere.
You want to achieve “X”, “Y”, and “Z”. Done. You’re a person who knows what they want.
There is something in between, “the getting there stage” that you haven’t quite figured out yet. You assume it’ll be okay though as long as you know what you want.
This is where I come in, I could argue that without being a little more detailed in your goal setting and figuring out the in between stuff you’re likely to be setting yourself up to fail.
Before you skip this next bit because “this doesn’t apply to you” I want you to read my back story. Even I have thought this didn’t apply to me and I’m a Personal Trainer. Believe it or not, I am only human too.
If you already know you are not outlining your goals properly and you want some actionable steps you can take right now to set clear and achievable goals check out this post.
Why Your Health And Fitness Goals Could Be Setting You Up To Fail
BACKSTORY
I recently had a Personal Trainer “AH-HA” moment. I set myself some very vague goals that didn’t seem so vague or unrealistic at the time. And you know what, even now that I look back on it I can clearly see how it affected my training.
A couple of months before Christmas, I decided I really wanted to do a chin up and deadlift my own weight. I thought “brilliant” something to work towards with my strength training (it has been falling behind with all my Group Fitness classes going on).
I’ll be honest, I got there just yesterday 😆:
Progress:
Goal:
There are however a couple of issues here:
- I only trained once a week to get there
- I didn’t outline from the beginning how many repetitions I wanted to achieve.
- I was at a slightly higher risk of injury.
These are issues because:
- I could have created a schedule around all of my classes to find the best times to complete a weights training program more than once a week so I would have reached my goals sooner and could have tracked my progress properly.
- I actually already could do one whole body weighted chin up. So does that mean I need to set a new goal? Or had I already achieved my goal and it was technically invalid. At this point, most people don’t set new goals and their training sessions start to drop off.
- A certain amount of repetition is related to how you want to use that muscle in your day to day life (endurance or heavy lifting). Without this clearly outlined in my goal, how will I know if I really achieved what I wanted?
- Because I was only training once a week, sometimes every 9 days. I was constantly getting DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness). This meant that I was at risk of injury teaching with a lot of muscle soreness and also prolonging the muscle soreness. Which is exactly the thing I wanted to avoid in the first place.
DOES THIS APPLY TO YOU
This applies to you if you have not been specific with your goals, if you have not outlined why you want to achieve them and if you have not set a training plan in place.
This is a problem because without clear goals your chances of dropping training sessions and healthy habits are significantly higher. Your progression can be slowed down. Without a clear understanding of your goals how can you acknowledge them when you achieve things? If you can’t acknowledge achievement you can run the risk of living in a dip dark hole of never being good enough.
HOW TO FIX IT
At this point, you have maybe had your own AH-HA moment but you are not really sure how to change it. Here are something questions you can answer to reassess your goals:
✔️ What is your goal?
✔️ Do you have a specific measurement related to this goal? Distance / Weight / Repititions / Time / Speed / Height / Measurements / Weight
✔️ Why is this goal so important? What will it meant to you when you achieve it and how will your like change when you do?
This is a really hard one for many to answer. You don’t have to get too complicated and deep if that’s not who you are. Some people are really superficial about it and they genuinely want to do something cool or show off a skill. Others want to feel more confident. Others want to see what their bodies can do for a sense of accomplishement.
✔️ How many times a week are you prepared to train to get there?
Once you have answered all of those, you need to lay out a schedule and your sessions. What do they look like to get you there. You might even choose to bring on some help and find someone to keep you accountable.
Train smarter so you can spend more time doing activities and adventures that you love. For services, get help even faster by emailing Kate.
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