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Why You Haven’t Hit Your Goals- Part 1

What if I told you the missing link to smashing your goals had nothing to do with training!?

I want you to think back to middle or high school and the first time you wrote a paper. What did that process look like? Do you remember how it started? For research papers my school taught us to write down research on note cards. Then we could separate different topics. Then once you had all the information you could formulate that into an outline. And once you created the outline you would write your first draft. 

 

Typically there were deadlines along the way. The order was note cards, outline, rough draft, second draft and final draft. I would imagine your schooling looked similar to this. I know usually for me my first draft was all over the place. It didn’t make sense and had no logical order. Thankfully after some revision from my teacher my second draft was significantly better. And then draft 3 was where the magic happened.

 

I want to shift gear for a minute. Stop and think about your top 3 fitness goals right now.

What are you training for day in and day out?

What thing are you wanting to accomplish?

Now let me ask you: have you ever written this goal down?

 

If you answer is no, that means you don’t even have a single draft for this goal! The truth is you are not alone because only 3% of the population have their goals written down. If you want to significantly increase your chances of succeeding at this goal then you need to go write it down.

 

As Mark England says: “The difference between a dream and a goal is that goals are written down.”

 

Putting it down on paper makes the goal more real. It now shifts from our dreams (in your head) to something tangible. And if you want to take that even further go tell somebody your goals. This may make you uncomfortable to write it down or tell a friend. That’s likely because you are nervous about if it’s possible. This is good and ultimately in order for you to accomplish the goal you have to believe it’s possible (we will dive more into that in a later blog).

 

Now that you have your goal written down you have created Draft 1. This is a great start, but we aren’t finished. Now it’s about creating more drafts so the goal becomes very specific and accurate. The more vague a goal, the less likely it is to be accomplished.

 

For example if your goal is: to get in better shape this year.

How will you know when you have completed this? Better shape is not only vague, but it is different for everyone. Do you want to be stronger? Have better cardio? Lose weight? Increase flexibility? You see if we don’t have a specific target to aim for then we are tossing darts blindly.

 

So let’s say you have decided that for you better shape means you want to get stronger, improve conditioning and lose weight. Now we are on to something! This is a much better draft 2, but we still have some work to do. How much stronger do you want to get? What do you consider to be improved conditioning? And how much weight do you want to lose?

 

Let’s move to draft 3:

You decide you want to:

-Back squat 300 pounds and bench press 200 pounds.

-Run a mile under 8 minutes.

-Lose 10 pounds.

 

AHA! We now have a very tangible and specific goal. In fact we now have 4 very accurate and specific goals. These goals are tangible, measurable and allow us to track progress. This will also take care of the “how” in order to get to these goals. There are very specific things you need to do in your training in order to get here. 

 

From here we can move onto breaking down these goals into smaller parts. For example you need to run a 9 minute mile before you can run an 8 minute mile. Once you break down your long term goals into smaller short term goals it creates steps along the way that are achievable and will keep you engaged day in and day out.

 

The first step to having more success with achieving your goals is to write them down (turn them from dreams into goals) and get as specific as possible!

Send a message if you want help creating accuracy and getting specific with your goals!

-Coach Taylor

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