A Look Back

How do you go from where you are to where you wanna be? And I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. And you have to be willing to work for it.

Jim Valvano

Consider this my fitness year in review article. Almost a year ago to the day, on December 13, 2014, I sat down and outlined six personal goals for improving my fitness level. In particular, I decided to focus on improving my maximal strength while improving conditioning by making these six goals my target. In you want an in-depth look at my 2014 goals, go here,. I will briefly outline them in this post. My six goals were:

1.       Maintain Bodyweight between 170-180lbs. Failed

2.       Perform the “Good Morning” strength exercise with my body weight for 10 repetitions Accomplished in September

3.       Deadlift 350lbs. Accomplished in July, Smashed in December

4.       Back Squat 400lbs Accomplished in December

5.       Hang Clean my body weight for sets of 10 Accomplished in October

6.       Meet the Sprint Protocol Outlined in the Original Post Accomplished in November

It should be noted that with the Good Morning, Deadlifts, Back Squat, and Hang Cleans that I do these exercises without the assistance of a weight belt. The reasoning is simple: the weight belt, while it does help improve the amount of weight a person can lift on certain exercises, is filler for poor form and muscular weakness. My personal feeling is that maintaining correct form with slightly less than maximal weight is both safer and more productive for long-term strength improvements than using the assistance of a belt to lift heavier weight, while sacrificing form, than one could safely do without it. Others may disagree with me; however, I am not just interested in being healthy and strong while I am young. I want to be doing this when I am eighty. I will take slower and safer progress for the sake of long term activity.

So how did I do with these goals? I smashed numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 while I utterly failed number one. I underestimated the muscle gain that would accompany the strength gains.  I am ending 2014 at around 195lbs, most of which should be straight muscle gain. How I am I confident of this? I am anal about tracking my caloric intake and monitoring body composition changes in light of my goals. It pretty simple: the shoulder, arms, and chest of my shirts are tighter while the stomach area and waist of my pants has gotten a little smaller during the time that the scale has been reading heavier. I am not complaining about this one bit. But I did ‘fail’ this particular goal.

If you have followed my blog at all in the past, you may notice that discussing goals is becoming a reoccurring theme. I truly believe that having clear, well-defined, written goals with a specific deadline is a powerful thing in any area of life, but especially when focusing on health and fitness. After eight years of working in the fitness industry I have become convinced that people struggle and fail with any and all kinds of programs because they never make the effort to establish a solid goal prior to beginning.

Now it is time to ask yourself a question, do you feel like 2014 was a productive year in terms of improving your personal health and fitness? Did you set a goal at the beginning of the year? If so, most likely that goal was accomplished or, at the very least, noticeable progress towards accomplishing the goal was made. One of the often unrecognized benefits of having clearly defined goals is that they help hold a person accountable to staying on task. This enables a person to remain more focused on a deliberate process that will bring about the completion of the goal. Going back to my list, notice that with the exception of number four, all of my goals were completed ahead of schedule. Going into the year, I knew that the four hundred pound back squat would be the most challenging of the goals to achieve. I am not surprised that it took the longest to accomplish. But even the hardest challenge was overcome because I made it a clear and written goal with a deadline.

I often talk with people whom are frustrated with a lack of progress and feel like they are wasting time when it comes to exercising. Most people have an idea of what they want put no clearly defined goal. A goal is a target, something at which to aim. But if a person is not aiming at something specific then that person will miss: every single time. Do you want 2015 to be better than 2014? Figure out what you want to accomplish and set a specific deadline. Only then will you be able to look back and see what has been accomplished.