So you’ve waited all year to get to the point where you feel the need to make a change somewhere in your life and you’ve chosen for it to be something along the lines of:

“To get fit”

“To lose some weight”

“To get to (insert goal) by the end of 2020”

Now -  where resolution are great and everyone should (in my opinion) have goals set at all times in a number of different aspects of work, family and personal life etc, have you set goals that are manageable and maintainable, how are you going to ensure that you smash these targets and don’t fall off that wagon?

Here are a few of my thoughts on how to make these goals stick like glue - this may not be new information to many of you and you may not agree but these are just my views after spending many years in the fitness industry and witnessing a lot of goals that were set with great intention only to fall by the wayside.

1. Ensure your goals are something that really matter to YOU!

What do I mean by this? Setting a goal that is most important to you and is purely for you and not everyone around you is crucial. If you are setting your personal goals around what society says you should be doing, or you are trying to imitate the life of someone on Instagram you’re likely to fall off the wagon as your heart's not in it and you’ll soon find out that the “Instagram Life” simply is not achievable - this will cause you to become disheartened with your efforts.

You’ve all heard the expression - “You can take a horse to water but you can’t force it to drink”.

This also applies when you are setting personal goals. If your goal is to stop smoking but you are truly not ready to quit and you are doing so because society is telling you to - the chances are you are not going to be able to achieve the goal. 

You really have to “Want” your goals in order to stay motivated about it. So make sure whatever goal you set your set yourself it is truly important to you. This will help you to stay motivated and keep you on track.

2. Be specific!

Every fitness professional at some point has encountered a gym member who has told them:

“My goal is to get fit”

Where this statement is full of fantastic intention, it really is very broad. “Getting fit” means very different things to everybody and if in your own head you don't have a clear idea of what “getting fit” means to you it makes the start of your journey very difficult.

Be specific with your fitness goals, get a bench mark and set the target. This could be as simple as aiming to scale your home stairs without getting out of breath, or a larger goal of running a marathon.

Just make sure you have a goal that is specific to you and you know where you’re starting so that you can measure progress.

3. Break your goals down.

If you have a long term goal be sure to break this down into smaller more manageable sections with different aspects of your goal being worked on.

For example if your aiming to lose 20kg in a year don’t always look at the big picture but do always keep it in mind. Set some smaller targets along the way. These don’t always have to relate directly to your goals but should always bear them in mind.

For example a breakdown for the goal above could be along the lines of.

• Month 1: Ensure i’m working out and learning about my calorie deficit safely and accurately - establish good habits around nutrition.

• Month 2: Increase my weekly exercise output from 2 to 4 gym sessions per week at an average of 45 minutes per session.

These goals will develop as you start on your journey and learn more about your targets.

All the time these short term goals are being worked through the long term goal should obviously be constantly monitored.

4. Log your successes and your failures.

Writing things down and being able to see them on paper is so important. Whether that's forward planning or logging past achievements this task will serve a couple of purposes.

• You will have a true perspective of how well you are actually doing. Sometimes you are doing a lot better than you think you are.

• You will learn - if you write things down you will inevitably try to work things out and this will help you learn a lot about goal setting and your specific targets.

• It will simply keep your targets fresh in your mind.

5. Reach out, ask for help!

You can’t always do it alone. So many individuals (especially in the fitness environment) set themselves goals and targets and don’t truly know how to reach them. This can become very disheartening and ultimately leads to failure 9 times out of 10.

Ask the experts, that's what they are there for. It doesn’t always have to cost a fortune - in fact 99% of the time a professional will happily give up 5 minutes of their time to help you out. 

6. Tell your friends/share your story.

If you're anything like me one of your biggest hates would be people thinking you’ve quit (Not failed - Quit)  at something. This is why I always tell people what I’m up to, if lots of people know what I'm doing and keep asking me about it, it really helps to keep me motivated - not because I would of forgotten but more because I don't want people thinking I've quit. 

This could be done through simply sharing with your friends or as extreme as  through social media for the whole world to see. Some of the most impressive fitness transformations I’ve seen have been fully logged through social media and I firmly believe this is purely down to the accountability you put upon yourself through committing to this.

7. Don’t be afraid to fail.

This is fairly self explanatory and I’m sure you've heard this one before. 

You can learn so much from failure, it may hurt a lot at the time but rest assured you’re not being judged on your failures.

This is just my two pennies worth, I’m no motivational speaker or inspirational writer but I hope some of you find some value in this.

Keep hammering away on your resolution and if you need help with anything just get in contact in with one of the DUAL Strength + Fitness, Horsham Team.

How do you stay on track with your goals? Comment below and it may just help someone else out. 💪😁