Prioritize ALL Your Fitness Goals for Best Results
Got lots of fitness goals? The problem with multi-tasking ALL your fitness goals is that it often leads to slow progress, disappointing results and time wasted. The secret to reaching all your health and fitness goals is knowing how to prioritize your body’s needs and your mental expectations. Here’s the smart way we do this in functional training sessions with clients.
1. Health History + Movement Screen + Visual & Verbal Assessment
The first step in crushing all those health and fitness goals is a thorough assessment. We need to know as much as possible about every aspect of your health and fitness, your lifestyle, your mindset, your motivation and emotional well being too. It is essential otherwise you are just guessing what your body needs and that often lands you on a never ending plateau pretty quickly.
2. Determine What Matters Most & Add 1-2 More Goals to That
Sometimes the best way to get results is to address the thing you know needs the most attention and if that feels doable enough you can also add secondary goals to focus on. For example if your main issue is consistency with workouts then setting a goal of showing up for a set number of workouts a month regardless of what those workouts are is going to make a HUGE difference in your mindset, motivation and ability to keep going with everything else. If that feels doable then you might want to also focus on improving the quality of your meals or on a routine that zones in on some of your trouble zones.
The problem when people set more than a few goals is that it feels overwhelming and not achievable because it is a lot of change you are asking of yourself. I’ve personally seen trainers hand their clients lists that look like the list below and it is beyond ridiculous to set those types of expectations right away.
Do Your Gym Goals Look Like This? Expect to Fail Fast!
Get to the gym 6 days a week
Do cardio every gym session
Lift weights 3-4 times a week
Walk and stretch on off days
Track every single calorie
Journal progress and mood daily
Get on a strict diet
Drink a gallon of water daily
Meditate and Do Breathing Exercises
This type of list, which by the way is based on a two page document I’ve seen a trainer hand clients, is not for beginners or people struggling to reach their goals. A list like this may be fine for experienced exercisers, fitness pros and overachievers who thrive on stress. If this is not you then do yourself a favor and just keep it simple. Aim for reaching 1-2 goals at a time and as you crush goals keep adding more. This is behavior modification 101 because it works!
3. You MUST Address Seeminly Incompatible Goals & Expectations
This one is a tricky one for most people because many of us do not want to admit the thoughts and desires that really drive our goals. For example if you are a person that has serious postural issues but you also need to see massive losses on the scale and pant size in order to keep going ,then focusing on gentle corrective posture exercises at every session is going to be a huge let down for you. A plan that prioritizes your needs at the expense of you wants is going to feel demotivating, frustrating and will probably make you quit.
The goal when you know you need to fix serious issues but you also need that visual satisfaction of losing weight is to learn how to train smarter. This is the method that I use with so many of my clients who absolutely can not stand another day in their overweight bodies but who also struggle to move because of postural pain issues. There is always a way to tackle incompatible goals so that your expectations are met in a way that feels right for you.
In training there is a saying “give the client 80% of what they need and 20% of what they want” and I’ve never agreed with this!
My goal with clients is to give them 100% of what they need and 110% of what they want. Some fitness professionals don’t believe this can be accomplished but it’s what I’ve been doing for 23 years so if this entire blog post has resonated with you and you’re not sure how to even go about all this be sure to contact me for one on one sessions.
