by Michael Plank
I met with Coach Bridget on Wednesday for some work stuff and we finished a little early. So I said “What are your fitness goals right now?” And she told me she wanted to get to an overall level of Purple (In case you’re not a member of our gym, we use a system called the Level Method to assess and progress fitness that’s similar to martial arts belts… Nobody hits Purple overall without putting in a LOT of work). We looked at where she is on her fitness skills and identified a couple of things holding her back. We took a few minutes to work on pull-ups and she leveled up that. Then the next day she came in and tested her ring dips and leveled up that. And in less than 24 hours from outlining her goal, achieved it!
Now I would love to say that I am such a sensational coach that I was able singlehandedly and dramatically improve her fitness in one mere day. But that’s obviously not the case.
The real magic here is in defining your destination. There is absolutely nothing wrong with training week in and week out just because training seems like a good thing to do. “Going through the motions” gets a bad rap, but is sometimes exactly the right approach.
However, it can be super impactful to take some time to think specifically about where you’d like your journey (fitness or otherwise) to take you. Here’s how you do it:
1. Ask: What is this all for? Where would you like to be in 12 months? Or 6 months? Or 3 months? Get as specific as possible.
2. Once you’ve done that, and you have the destination laid out, you need to figure out how to get there. For fitness goals, maybe you need some more upper body strength, or flexibility, or coordination. Maybe you need to tweak your approach to nutrition. Maybe you need to sleep more or figure out some stress relief.
3. Break that route down into manageable pieces. If you have the journey laid out for how to get from A to B over the next 6 months, where do you need to be in 90 days? Where do you need to be in 30 days? Where do you need to be next week? What do you need to do today to get you there?
4. Get to work.
(I have to point out here that a coach who’s not you can be super helpful here. They are, by definition, more detached from your circumstances and will be able to see stuff that you can’t see. If you’re a member at our gym, Goal Reviews are available to you any time, for free.)
No matter where you are or where you want to be, having direction and a plan can be very helpful.
But one of the best parts of the process is that quite often, like Bridget, you find out that you’re a lot closer than you thought.