REASSESSING YOUR ANNUAL GOALS
It’s coming up on the middle of the year, and you have either already accomplished your yearly goals, or you are still working towards them. Both of these circumstances are perfectly normal, but the question is, how do you plan your next move? Exercise and training goals vary in difficulty, time, and measurement.
One set of guidelines to look to is SMART goal setting.
Specific: Define exactly what you need to accomplish
Measurable: Quantify your goals and build in milestones so they're easier to track
Achievable: Consider if you have the resources to achieve your goal
Relevant: Consider why you're setting the goal and how it will improve your life or career
Time-bound: Set a firm schedule and stick to it
Reassessment
When it comes to reassessment, you’ll need to go along this list and consider what it is you think needs some fine-tuning. Your goal may already be specific, for example, “I want to run a marathon”. If you haven’t accomplished this yet then you’ll need to restructure your plan. Maybe you have accomplished it, but you decide you want to do it faster than before. Either way your specific goal is now re-established or slightly modified.
As far as measurement goes, this can be done with many factors such as time, distance, or frequency of the training. Increasing distance or reducing time is a simple way to work towards your goal, although it is important to make these more manageable increases. An easy way to figure out what is manageable is to decide an endpoint for the time to accomplish the goal and work back from that point. So if you want to improve your time by ten minutes in total, maybe you break that down into thirty-second or minute improvements each one to two weeks. This makes it not only more achievable but much less daunting to focus on.
Achievable Goals
Making your goals more achievable and relevant to you is also something to reconsider. The most apparent factor in training is the time you can dedicate to it. Maybe you set out the year with the mindset to train five days a week. For a while, this was working, but something changed. Work or personal life required more time and focus, or maybe five days was overly ambitious, and your body couldn’t recover as well. There’s nothing wrong with reconsidering your training time. It is much better to have three or four days of solid training than five not-so-good days of training. Results come from good, consistent work your body can manage and recover from. This is especially true when it comes to the relevancy of your goals. If your goal is to be healthy, fit, and enjoy life more, then your plan should reflect that. Even if your goal is to get a more competitive time in a race, the overall purpose still has its roots in enjoyment. Remember, training should be fun and positive, just as much as challenging.
Reassessing is GOOD
Finally, the time aspect of reassessing your goals is why we set those annual goals. Studies show that setting time sensitive goals encourages us more to accomplish them. With six months left in the year there is plenty of time to do it. As I previously stated, working backwards is a great place to start, but part of that is scheduling. Maybe you realize that training in the morning is better for you now than training in the evening, or that a weekend training session is better for you because you don’t have to worry about a work schedule that day. Either way, reconsidering the time or how much time you train is just as important as the date at which you accomplish it. A great way to get started at reassessing your goals is to meet with one of our coaches for a reassessment! It’s at no cost to you as a member. Sign up for one!