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How To Pick A Better (More Exciting) Training Goal · Your Strongest Body

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: You are listening to your strongest body.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Betsy Foster, a certified strength and conditioning specialist and certified nutrition coach.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I've worked as a personal trainer for over a decade, helping people build strength, speed, muscles, as well as a deep appreciation for their bodies and confidence that helps them live their life to the fullest.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Now I'm sharing what I know with you fitness, nutrition and all the deeper stuff to help you discover your strongest body.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Hello, hello, welcome back, betsy here.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: One of the things when I started the new podcast this podcast so I had a podcast previously that helped trainers loved the podcast, but I thought it felt a little sometimes robotic, and one of the things I love about listening to other podcasts is sort of getting the human side of the host and getting to know a little bit about them.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: And as I sit here trying to do that in this podcast, I think like I don't have anything really interesting that I want to share or think will be interesting to let you know the human side of me.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I thought I'd have these little anecdotes that would sort of connect, and now I'm a bit searching for those, so to speak.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: So we'll work on that.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: That will be an evolving piece of this podcast.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So I guess I'll spare you me trying to come up with some personal stories and just pop into the topic of today, which is going to be picking your training goal.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Now, one of the big things that you hear in fitness is about having to have a goal.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Goal focused training is highly popular and is a big part of what personal trainers learn in their work to develop programs and services for clients.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Goals get a lot of attention in fitness, for good reason, because, when it comes to training, specificity is queen, meaning what we train for specifically, what we practice specifically, what we get reps of, is what adapts in our body, is what gets better, which is also super important because if you are sort of aimlessly training, you are going to get some sort of training effect, but you can't control the effect that you're going to get and it might be more just load on the body, stress on the body, exhaustion, fatigue, versus specifically choosing exercises, choosing rep schemes, choosing workout length, choosing days of the week to work out, choosing the order of the exercises, choosing the style of training which will more directly pinpoint the things that you want in order to help you successfully reach that goal in a time frame that works for you.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: Now I'm going to talk in this episode a lot about how we can pick better goals, how we can pick goals that more align with what we actually want and goals that really motivate our training, really spark something in our training.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: But I want to also kind of quickly say that goals alone aren't the most important thing in your training and for folks who are professional athletes, who are paid to train, who are consistently working out with a plan with all of the pieces in place to support them, a goal is going to have more weight and is going to be more helpful and more important to stick to in their fitness or in their athletic journey.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: For the average fitness enthusiast, particularly those who have full-time jobs or kids or ailing parents or a home to take care of or friends to see or a life outside of the gym, goals are going to be helpful, but they don't have to be the only thing that matters and realizing sometimes just getting a workout in whether it's perfect for your goals, whether it's absolutely ideal, is more important than getting it exactly right.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So goals are important and goals are going to direct our training.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: So for a lot of us who just need more movement, who need consistency, things like that.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Sometimes those goals are supportive and just getting it done is helpful too.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: So I want to stress that deciding the perfect goal and getting all that set up before you start is not necessary, and that these goals can shift and change and there's nothing set in stone here about what it is you're going to do.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: When we pick a goal that is aligned with what we want to do, that is going to really help direct our training.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: That is going to give us a little bit of fire.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: We can make some magic in the gym.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: So that's what we're going to talk about today.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: So let's start with what is the standard for goal setting?
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: It's typically called smart goals.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: You may have heard this in either fitness or in business or sort of other realms, because it's a really common acronym.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to explain it.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: It's specific, that's the S.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I had a second where I was like do I remember this?
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: Specific, measurable, so it has some metrics that you can look at.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Goal is the A, so you can actually attain it.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Realistic both of those things seem a little bit similar to me, but I think the realistic part is typically about how it can fit in your life, and timely so that it has some sort of time bound element, so that you have a sense of haste or whatever is an appropriate amount of speed that you're putting toward this, so it's not sort of aimless in terms of time.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: So SMART goals are what that system is taught to many people, particularly trainers who are starting to work with clients, and it's a great starting framework because it gives you concepts around building those goals and things to be thinking about, especially when you feel really overwhelmed by the idea of what even is a goal to pick.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: I like it, but I am going to give you what I think are three better questions.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: They've got more to them and that I think will create some more interesting goals, because I think sometimes these SMART goals that fit in that little framework are just plain boring and a little, I don't know, like stale stale to me, and they can easily become stale Again.
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: I think it's a good framework to start with, but I think if you're working, if you're training yourself, if you're trying to drum up some kind of for lack of a better term intrinsic motivation to get your workout going, I want you to think about these three questions.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: So what makes me excited when I picture doing it.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: So I want to think about that goal and I want to picture something that is going to make me genuinely excited to accomplish it and that gives you a lot of that's not just one kind of goal there are lots of goals but I want you to do some visualization.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Close your eyes, picture that person, that you, the version of you that is going to achieve that goal somewhere down the line, and what is the thing that excites you?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: In the same vein, does it make you a little nervous that you might not get it done?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: Listen, any goal that you feel like you can immediately accomplish is helpful to have because it's going to in many ways.
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: That's how we want to address habit changes.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: We want to.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: We want to start with the things that are for sure we can get this done, or I have almost 100% confidence that I can get this done.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: But when we talk about goals that are going to direct our programming in the future, I want to be a little nervous that I can't get there, and then from that, I'm going to start to break that down into more doable steps.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: But if there isn't a little nerves, if there isn't a little bit like, I'm not sure I could get there, then you probably could already be doing that thing and you haven't lit the fire yet.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Again, I keep coming back to this lighting the fire because I think there's something that you can really harness about the excitement, about the possibility that is going to drive some extra oomph to what it is you're doing.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: And for many of us, the fitness habits we have are out of obligation, are a slog.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: What could happen if it wasn't that way?
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: What could happen if there was a little bit of excitement and a little bit of promise?
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's anybody in here from the CrossFit community listening, but CrossFit does it well.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Crossfit does the pushing past the edge of comfort, it does the think about doing the impossible in a way that does really light up people who do CrossFit, and so I think there's something there to take and to channel.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Whether you do CrossFit or you do any other kind of training, there's something to take there.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: And then the third question I want you to ask yourself is how quickly do I think I could accomplish this, or at least one segment of this?
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: So I'm having you come back to the timeliness of it and make a commitment on the time, or at least a commitment to.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get this part of it by this time, realizing that these commitments are artificial and they can shift and they can change.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: Sometimes your fitness goals take a backseat to your real life, and that's okay, but sometimes having the vision is all you need to get the ball rolling.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: That's a big piece of it.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: So, if you notice, what I've done is sort of take out the realism and attainable thing from this smart goals, because I'm just I just think it's like it delves the fire.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: It delves the fire and it becomes another thing on your to-do list and it becomes less vision board and more grocery list.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: And grocery list is doable and it's fine, but it's boring.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: It's boring.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: So have some boring goals but have some big goals, and that's what I'm gonna get to.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Next is, I think you can have two kinds of goals, or you can have lots of different kinds of goals, but some ways that I would think about dividing up your goals.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about the different kinds of goals and then you may wanna have a mix of these.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: We don't wanna necessarily be trying to accomplish more than two or three things at a time, but again, there is an element to having some options.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: That gives you some freedom when we talk about fitting all this into our real life.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about a couple of the kinds of goals, my favorite.
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna start with my favorite, actually, which is I'm jumping.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I'm skipping what I thought I was gonna do, but I'm jumping to the favorite.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: So for me, I think you could have a reality goal and a reach goal.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: A reality goal is one in which it's gonna be a little challenging for you, but you know you can do it.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: You just gotta get all the pieces lined up and commit to it.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: The reach goal is maybe out of reach, but it is the kind of thing that's going to have you training in a way that excites you.
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: It's gonna have you pushing.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: So I talked about in a previous episode about how do you get yourself to push yourself.
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: If you are always picking things that are easy to do, you will never be pushing yourself.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: So that reach goal doesn't have to set you up for disappointment.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: It sets you up for excitement, it sets you up for drive, it sets you up for pushing past.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, last week I heard myself and I really punched those peas.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: So I'm trying to sit back a little bit from the mic so I don't bother you, but I want you to push past what you think you can do.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: I want you to think about the people who play professional sports.
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: So I'm gonna pick football, because that's what I've been thinking about lately.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: There are 32 teams in the NFL.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Every single person on every one of those teams, I'm betting.
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: Their goal is to win the Super Bowl.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: There are only going to be 53 people on one team that win the Super Bowl, that's it.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: But all of those people are going to have that as their goal.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Does that mean that it's a bad goal, because not everybody's gonna reach it?
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: No, it is the goal that's gonna have them out there playing their hardest every game.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: So I think sometimes, with those smart goals, we stop ourselves from really pushing.
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: Again, I will make a little note that you are not a professional football player, unless you are, which whoa.
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening, and if you could write a review and please put your name in there, that would be helpful.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: But no, most of us at least listening aren't gonna be professional athletes.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: I'm not.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean that I can't have goals that I'm gonna be pushing past what I think I can do.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Those are so good, and it doesn't mean you're a failure if you don't reach them.
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I think that's a little bit what the smart goal piece is about, because it's this fear of failure that's gonna derail your progress, and I think that's important when it comes to instituting the little steps and the habit changes along the way.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: So, again, when I talk about habit change, I talk about when you're adding a workout in or adding minutes to your workout, or adding in an extra walk or changing something about your diet.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: We aim to do things in small increments that feel completely doable, so that you have wins stacked up on top of each other and you can build these habits progressively.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: But that's different than setting training goals, so I think that's sometimes where we get lost.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I think it's important for us to have both those really realistic, attainable goals and then the ones that you wake up the next day and you're like all right, I'm gonna do this, and I think that's what we have on January 1st.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes People have pretty amazing resolution energy and I think we just have to figure out a way to harness that, and we have to figure out a way that it's not necessarily a resolution that we can be unsuccessful at, it is a driving force for us.
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: So I said a real, a reality goal and a reach goal.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: Other goals that are important to have or ways you can categorize these goals are outcome versus habit.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: So an outcome goal is something where you can not literally control the action of reaching that goal without all the steps.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: So something like a performance goal.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: If you thought about, like get a pull up, or get my first push up, or lift a certain amount of weight, or get this, you know, whatever it is, win a championship, like I said, that's a performance goal, a behavior goal.
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: Sorry, I said habit goal, but behavior goal is something that is about what you can do.
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: So your behavior goal might be to get to the gym three times this week.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Your behavior goal might be to have more protein at lunch three times this week.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: Those you have more direct.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: What's the word I'm thinking of?
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Contribution to that's not exactly what I was thinking about, but you have more power over that goal versus the performance goal, which is, to a certain extent, a little bit out of your control, but you can do the things that help you get there.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: So your goals if you took your performance goal and broke it down into behavior goals.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: You might increase the amount of times that you were training.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: If it was your pull-up goal.
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: You increase the frequency of training the pull-ups, things like that Consistency and steps and things like that that can be a behavior goal as well.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: It's really going to be helpful probably to have both of those, because, again, putting some things that are out of reach is helpful, and then also having things that are really within your control are helpful, and then thinking about time-wise.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: So having some goals that you can achieve pretty quickly are really helpful.
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: You want some wins early.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: So can you have a goal that's going to be four weeks or six weeks along, great.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: Then have one that's your six-month goal and then have one that's your year goal or your five-year goal, whatever that may be.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: That really reach-far goal keeps you moving forward, but those short-term goals allow you wins in the immediate.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: If you notice, most of the things I'm talking about is having some different options so that you have multiple ways to train and to have successes.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the success is just knowing that you got to the gym.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the success is being more excited about what it is that you were doing.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: So I encourage you to take training.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: That's maybe one of the biggest things behind what I want to do with my podcast and my business and I think I said it in the first episode is to take this thing that feels like such a chore for people, that feels like such a must-do not a love to do.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: I know you're not going to love every aspect of it, but wouldn't it be so cool to have some moments where there's like real excitement, real fire about what it is you can do, what your body can do, what your mind can do, your mind pushing through the hard stuff and continuing to show up.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: What an absolute win.
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: All right, so I'm going to leave you with those three more inspiring questions here to finish out, and then I'm going to let you go.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: So if you're thinking about goals, you can think about those smart goals, but I want you to think about these three questions.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I want you to think about what makes me excited, to picture a future version of myself doing what makes me excited?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Not what feels like a win, not what feels like what everybody thinks my goal should be.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: What makes me excited?
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: What makes me a little nervous that I might not be able to actually get it done.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's got to be an element that it feels a little bit out of reach.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And then, how quickly do I think I can accomplish this, or at least the first segment of this?
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: All right, what I want you to do is listen to this episode and then, if you come up with a new training goal, I want you to send it to me.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: Either email me, betsy, at bfosterstrongcom, or send it to me in the DMs at foster underscore strength.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I'd love to hear what they are.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I'd also love to be an accountability partner in this.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: So you send it to me and then I'll be your cheerleader along the way.
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you, as always, for listening to the podcast.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: These things live out on the internet and I'm trying to get them to reach so many people.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: So, if it was helpful for you and you think it might be helpful for somebody else, if you can share the podcast, if you're on Apple podcasts, you can leave a rating and or a review.
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: All of those are super helpful.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: If someone's searching, they see a podcast has reviews that relate to them or has a great rating.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Those things just help people go.
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: Oh, she might know what she's talking about and I feel like I do.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: So thank you as always.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Until next time, go build your strongest body, and I'll talk to you soon.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Bye.