You may not be training for a professional team. You may not ever earn your living from athletics.
Sure, this message should be applied to your training.
But the message here goes beyond athletics.
It crosses over to all aspects of life.
How bad do YOU want to meet your goals?
I’d be remiss not to put a plug in for my challenge workout program. If you want to up your fitness game, having a plan is imperative. Setting a goal is paramount. How will you know where you’ll end up if you don’t chart your course?
Do you have a plan? Have you set a goal? Is it written down?
Studies show that those that set small achievable goals and then celebrate small victories along the way are more successful at meeting their challenges. Don’t forget that it’s often the small victories you achieve that are just as sweet as the BIG ones. Your goals can be related to fitness and fat loss, but of course they also apply to other areas of your life like career, family, finances, what ever is important to you.
Break your goals into small manageable steps.
If your weight loss goal is to lose 50 lbs, it’s much more manageable to consider losing a few pounds a week. Celebrate each week to help you stay on track and motivated to your final goal.
Each person has different fitness and fat loss goals. Don’t let others determine what YOUR goals are. If it means that for starters you cut out the fries with your fast food meal, that’s an important step. You can move ahead from there, taking that small step towards change is what’s important.
The changes that are easiest to implement are those that you painlessly integrate into your lifestyle slowly over time. This goes for your training and your nutrition (as well it can be applied to other aspects of your life).
For example, for me, clean eating didn’t happen over night. Slowly I incorporated healthy choices as I eliminated the not-so-healthy choices. The good news is that when you stick to a healthy routine, it’s actually self correcting. I feel so good eating clean and training regularly, that when I deviate too much from healthy choices, I feel crumby.
Take small steps towards your ultimate goal and eventually if you keep moving forward, you’ll get to your desired destination.
Slowly over time you’ll move from A to B.
My friend Alwyn Cosgrove talks about ‘process goals’. By using process goals, you create momentum that helps carry you to your bigger goals.
If 10 pull ups is your goal, you can set process goals to help you reach this. Process goals may include something like:
- Get a plan
- Implement the plan religiously, don’t skip workouts
- Increase the number and quality of assisted pull ups
- Train other body parts to achieve a balanced physique and avoid over use injuries (it’s in the plan)
- Implement healthy eating to lose excess flub so pull ups will be easier
You’ll be pleasantly surprised that as you stick to your process goals week after week, the larger goal of achieving 10 pull ups will happen.
Hitting your process goals = success.
Try this approach, and watch your goals become a reality.
Seriously, try using the process goals approach rather than the “end goal” in mind, and it might just be the perfect avenue for you.
Celebrate the victories (big or small).
Get a plan to help you.