The Importance of Goal Setting

I will preface this whole blog post by stating that any action is much preferable than no action at all. Now to the actual point of the blog, having a plan and implementing said plan will multiply the impact of your specific actions relative to where you are headed. Where are you headed though?

“A ship that sails without a compass will get lost at sea.” – Matshona Dhliwayo. It is important that we have a destination in mind and in order to do so we have to first figure out what that destination is. This is essentially the importance of setting goals, both short-term and long-term. The long-term goals will lay out the road for years ahead, and the short-term roads will connect the dots between Points A and Z.

The correlation between life and fitness are far too many to ignore the principles that apply to them both. Using fitness as an example we can think of an individual who goes to the gym regularly. She goes to her local YMCA without a plan. She’s been doing so for a few months now. At first everything was exciting and new, and now it’s all pretty bland and random. She’ll hop on the machine that is less crowded or unused and perform a few reps. She does this for 45-60 minutes (most of the time just spent on her phone), and after an hour calls it a day and heads home.

At first this worked for her because her only goal was to begin working out. So from sitting on the couch to browsing the gym machines she made an improvement. Now that her body has adapted to the unstructured and unchallenged random movements of her gym sessions, she feels stuck. She achieved her goal, start working out. This was a short-term goal, it was achieved. Now she needs to define the next step (another short-term goal), and the destination (long-term goal).

If her long-term goal is to maintain a healthy and physically capable body for the rest of her life, a good next step will be to add structure to her training. She decides that to do so she wants to build strength. So she downloads a 12-week strength program from the internet and begins following that. The spark has once again been ignited. She’s engaged and determined to up her strength levels. After 12-weeks of consistent work she reaps the results and has seen a significant improvement in her strength levels.

After a few weeks though, she hits that mental and physical plateau once more. Now what? She clearly wants more, or something else, but what? Once again she must evaluate and generate the next step into her long-term mission of achieving long-term health and fitness. This could be by working on her nutrition or another form of training and/or mindset skills. Without these constant goal reviews the athlete is risking becoming disengaged and more likely to “fall off the wagon.”

Crossfit does a great job at keeping people engaged because of its variety of benchmarks and different ways to measure progress. Someone may be looking for strength building, while someone else might be trying to lose weight. By doing crossfit they both will be building to achieve these goals, many times both goals at the same time within the same person. 

If you’ve been bored with your fitness routine lately. Or haven’t stuck to a fitness program because of a lack of desire. Figure out what your goal is (long-term), and figure out why you want to achieve that goal. Once you have that figured out, create the shorter steps that you will need to follow to get there. And frequently revise these goals and steps. Things change, you will change, and your goals will likely change as well, keep them updated to stay motivated. Reach out to Crossfit Phoenix 815 ( cfphoenix.com ) if you need help creating and planning out your fitness goals.