Every year we set new goals
At the beginning of every year, just about everyone in the world comes up with arbitrary resolutions that they will likely forget about two weeks after they make em have already forgotten.
But you’re different and know that New Year’s Eve is probably the worst time to drunkenly announce your goals to the room full of people who don’t actually care if you get better by next year.
You also know that just stating a goal is the easy part and you actually need a solid, realistic, goal to shoot for AND a well thought out plan to reach it.
If you haven’t set short-term and long-term training goals then stop what you’re doing now and get that done.
Just write down:
1.) What do you want to accomplish in the next 30-days?
2.) What do you want to achieve in the next 6-months to 1-year?
If you need help finding a realistic target to shoot for, check out this awesome article:
Data-Based Muscle, Strength, and Fat-Loss Targets to Set Realistic Training Goals
An example:
My goal over the next 30-days is to continue to get stronger while leaning out as much as I can.
Since I’ve focused on getting stronger over the past 6-8 months with no real regard for my body composition I figured now would be a great time to get back on track.
I’m sitting at about 192# right now and about 15# of that isn’t the good stuff so I’m gonna test some stuff out over the next 30-days to see how close I can get to 180 without losing all my sweet fat-kid gains!
Less Body Fat, Same or Improved Strength — Who else would like that?
The Plan
A goal without a plan is bullshit so to accomplish this I’m gonna keep things as simple as possible…
1.) Step up my endurance and conditioning training.
I’ve gotten a bit lazy when it comes to endurance work over the past 6 months as I’ve gotten busier… Opting for shorter duration and heavier workouts has led to me getting a lot stronger but also a lot bigger overall (good & bad).
So now I’m gonna change things up a bit and see how much muscle and strength I can hold on to while at the same time getting my endurance and conditioning back to where it used to be.
Specifically, this means I’ll be spending at least 2 training sessions each week hitting some sort of longer duration endurance &/or interval work.
2.) Maintain my strength (or even get a bit stronger)
To do this I’m kicking off (well, I kicked it off last Monday) another round of One Man, One Barbell from my buddy Jerred over at End of Three Fitness.
This simple, but brutal, single barbell program has worked wonders in the past and I know that it will continue to work great for me going forward.
4-day per week of lifting heavy stuff should do the trick!
3.) Eat more good stuff, drink less bad stuff
Pretty simple…
Keeping the diet on track is probably the most important aspect here for me to hit my goal so there will be a significant increase in vegetable matter shoved down my gullet and a significant reduction of alcohol consumed.
Those two things, combined with the fact that my diet is pretty solid most days anyway and I should see some big differences pretty quickly.
The name of the game here is consistency so the ultimate diet goal is to make good choices as often as possible.
Your Turn
My plan is pretty simple.
And your plan should be simple as well.
I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of people by this point and unnecessary complexity is one of the quickest ways to fail.
So keep this simple.
And pick a goal you know you can accomplish in 30-days.
Small wins build confidence and show you what’s possible.
So don’t over complicate things – specific and achievable is what you need!