It’s Labor Day here in the good ol’ US of A, the symbolic end of summertime and the unofficial start of fall.
I wanted to take a moment to thank you for allowing me to do something I love – coaching people I really enjoy on how to improve their lives, gain physical and mental strength and be better for their friends and loved ones.
For me, it truly is a labor of love, so, thank you.
The change of seasons is the perfect time to take stock of where you are and set some goals for your health and fitness in the fall. And as we know, any “SMART” goal must be:
Specific: “Getting tone” is not a specific enough goal. Losing 10 pounds in the next 6 weeks is much better.
Measurable: I talk a lot about getting stronger but to make this a goal, we have to know “how much stronger?” “I’d like to be able to do 20 push-ups on my toes in the next 6 weeks,” is something you can actually measure. This way, you’ll know at any given point if you’re on track, or if something needs to change.
Attainable: This is where most people get tripped up. They set goals that simply aren’t attainable. You shouldn’t set a goal of losing 30 pounds by Christmas, but what if you lost an average of 1 pound a week for 30 weeks? You’d be much leaner and healthier before Memorial Day and very happy, I’d guess. 🙂
Realistic: I could squat every day for the rest of my life and never squat 500 pounds (unless I added up all my weights cumulatively, lol). But if I did my pre-and post-workout stretching and mobility exercises consistently, I could squat without pain for as long as I wanted to. That frankly, would be a much more useful goal.
Timely: A goal has to have a deadline, otherwise it’s just a wish. Having a goal without a defined timeframe promotes procrastination. And procrastination kills progress.
Also, I find that people are reluctant to set deadlines because they’re afraid of failure. “What if I don’t achieve X result by such-and-such date? I’ll be a failure!”
Much better to miss the deadline, regroup, and achieve it later than to never have started in the first place.
So enjoy the holiday, and use this opportunity of the changing seasons to decide what kind of fall you’d like to have. What’s something specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely that you’d like to achieve, say, in the next 4-6 weeks?