Goal setting season is officially upon us here at District H Strength & Fitness. A lot of you may not necessarily know where to start, so here are 5 Tricks to get you on the path to success.
1) Start with “Why”: As “cheesy” as this concept sounds, it is the most crucial piece to setting goals and forming healthy habits. I recently wrote a blog post about finding your “why” or “purpose” for wanting to come into District H every single day. Spend some time thinking about your “why,” write it down, and place it somewhere that is going to be highly visible to you every single day (e.g. bathroom mirror, car dashboard, desktop monitor, etc.). This is something you can share with the coaching staff or you can keep it private.
2) Make SMART Goals: I am sticking with the “cheesy” on this one. The reason why you see it so much when it comes to goal setting is because IT WORKS. Just to review, SMART stands for:
- Specific
- Measureable
- Attainable
- Realistic
- Timely
District H has tried to help in this regard by asking you questions that already address specific parts of this acronym. We are going to be focusing on 1 to 2 goals (realistic) over a 3 months time period (timely & attainable).
3) Make Sure You are Measuring Progress: If you aren’t tracking metrics tied to your specific goals, how do we know if we are making progress, need to make adjustments, or, more importantly, whether or not we actually accomplished them? District H has provided multiple avenues for measurement including:
- InBody Scan: If your goal is tied to body composition, make sure you do a before, middle, and after InBody scan to make sure you are making progress.
- SugarWOD: Record and track your workout on a daily basis. Our programming provides a linear progression when it comes to strength training so as long as you are showing up consistently, you should be making progress in your fitness.
- MyZone: Our new heart rate monitor system provides daily Myzone Effort Points (i.e. MEPs) that give you a certain amount of points depending on how much time you spent in certain heart rate zones. For those of you who don’t necessarily care about your scores in the WOD or your strength numbers, this would be a great option for you. The goal would be to slowly increase your MEP count month-over-month. Intensity is the key variable in a fitness routine and MyZone provides a quantifiable way to measure your average intensity in every single workout.
4) Don’t Forget Your Nutrition: This is by far where you are going to get the best bang for your buck. Focusing on good, sustainable nutrition habits will act as THE catalyst for reaching your fitness goals, whatever they may be. Make a commitment to focusing on one specific thing in your nutrition for a 3-week period and once you have made it a habit, move to another one, then another one. By the end of the year, you will have fixed 17-18 nutrition habits, and will probably be looking and feeling the best you’ve had in a while.
5) Consistency is Key: Like most things in life, being consistent with your health and wellness is paramount. The body likes to be in a state of homeostasis, so in order to see change, the body needs to consistently be taken out of homeostasis and challenged. We do this through repetitive stimulus that includes resistance training and aerobic/anaerobic conditioning. In other words, that feeling you have at the end of the workout where you are laying on the ground breathing hard? That is the body dealing with the fact that it is no longer in homeostasis. That is where we will see progress, but it takes more than one or two times per week.
Happy Goal Setting Everyone!