SET GOALS

Hello Eternians near and far.. I’m back again.  Sitting here thinking about this new year of 2015 coming up, only one day away.  Plenty of you out there are gearing up for tonight to get in one last hu-rah for the year before you start your plan of attack for 2015.  This got me thinking a bit.  I want to talk today about not setting “New Year Resolutions” but goals instead, as well as a plan of attack to get you to them. 

The problem I see with setting resolutions instead of goals is that with resolutions we are usually focusing on things we are getting ourselves to NOT do rather than DO.   I myself am a doer!  Not doing puts a negative tone in your mind.  This isn’t about being negative, it’s about being positive.  It’s much easier to get yourself to do something than to try NOT to do something.  A lot of times by DOING something, you won’t even care about or want to do the things you would have made a resolution not do to. 

Research done in sports psychology leads us to believe that the world’s greatest athletes all set very clear goals for themselves.  They have daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, and multi yearly goals they set. Some small some large.  They know that there daily goals, when met, spill into their weekly goals, and so on.  By setting clear and distinctive goals, you set yourself up for success. 

You should sit down and think of some goals as well as a plan of attack to get to those goals.  Just setting a goal is not enough.  You need to put into place a plan  or a system that you are going to use to help get you to your goal.   I’m not going to get into the usual lose weight, firm up, get healthier usual New Year crap.  Let’s take for instance you have been doing your best to work out, “eat good, but you really want to make 2015 the year and you are willing to finally do what it takes to make it happen.  You need to set some distinct, measurable goals.  Let’s say for instance you currently squat 200 but you feel you should be able to squat 250.  Is that a measurable goal?  Yes.  Now let’s look at why you aren’t there and what we need to put into your system to make it happen.  Are you eating enough?  Are you eating enough of the right foods?  Are you sleeping enough?  Are you recovering enough?  Here is a big one, are you really putting your all into your workouts, or are you going through the motions?  All of these can effect what’s going on with your main goal of that squat.  Now, yes that doesn’t include some of your performance imbalances but that is another article all together which we will get to.  So, we have this goal of adding the 50 lbs to your squat this year. 

System

Daily - 7-8 hours sleep, enough good calories to aid in our recovery, putting your all into your training sessions

Weekly - Making all of your training sessions for the week solid.  We all have bad days here and there, it’s making the most of every session we can muster up.

Year Goal-50 lbs added to back squat

Monthly Goal- Add 4 lbs to back squat

Now let's look at a few more strong points to help us get to our GOAL in 2015.  For us to keep solid track of our progress we need to be logging our day to day activity.  Get yourself a notebook of some sort. If you are tracking what you are doing it will help you keep yourself accountable and give you something to reference.  Keep track of food, how your day was, how you slept, how your training went.  You get the picture, it all goes in there.  Last piece of this puzzle is letting others in on your goals.  Friends, coaches, training partners you name it.  We are here to help, keep you on track and answer questions for you.  

Guess what the by-product of all those awesome stuff you will be DOING is?  Not only are you going to be killing your GOALS in 2015, I’ll bet you look leaner, stronger and all around more bad ass.  You’re welcome.

Looking at what’s holding you back from your end GOAL and being a doer, I promise you will take care of all those resolutions you want to keep yourself from doing.  When you have your eye on the prize, the small dumb things tend not to matter so much anymore.

Stay positive, keep kicking ass and set yourself some solid GOALS for 2015.  GET ETERNIA STRONG!