Goal Setting

Hi Fusers!! Happy weekend to you all! Extra bonus: it's 3 days long! Awesome :)

I hope last post got you to thinking about your fitness goals; I know it did for me. Which is why I want to talk a bit more in-depth about the importance of setting specific goals and how to set them, and why this leads to success. I will also share my personal fitness goals--nothing like putting your goals out there to the world to help hold you accountable!

First of all, setting goals gives you focus and clarity for the long-term, and also inspires and motivates you day to day. Specificity is really important when setting goals; it creates a clearly defined goal and a time frame in which you want to achieve it. For example, if your goal is simply to lose weight, there's very little motivation or focus there to push you. However, if you specify that you want to lose 8% body fat by May 1st of this year, now you're talking. You've got something quantifiable to achieve and a deadline that you want to hit this goal by. The SMART acronym is a perfect guideline to help you make goals that will be successful.

After creating a time frame for yourself, it's much easier to break that up into smaller periods with smaller goals set to help reach the big goal. Much more manageable than just saying I'd like to lose some weight this year. A really important part of setting these smaller, stepping stone goals is rewarding yourself. Whether it's a massage, a new outfit, whatever it is that feels like a reward, this is really motivational and a key to success.

I'm going to share with you my fitness goals for this year. This will help hold me accountable and keep me in check. First, and most important for me, is that I will spend more time this year making sure I have enough recovery between workouts. I have found that my body is overtrained, feeling tight and injured, and I know that I am working out too much. Without proper recovery, you actually stall your improvements, and it has a negative effect on the body. I need to really focus on this, which is very difficult for me, because as many of you know, I want and love to work out with every one of my classes.

My next goal is that I want to add weight to my pull-ups. By May, I'd like to be able to do 5 strict pull-ups with an 8lb kettlebell attached to my body. Let the pull-up training begin for me! I will keep you posted on this goal :)

Last, I must bring back my post-workout protein shakes!! I will do another post on this soon (including a video of me making my shake so you can see how easy it is), but for now, you can read my last one here. This is so important, and I have completely dropped the ball on this. Beginning this week, it's on!

Enjoy the beautiful weekend everyone!

Yours in Health,

Kristin at The Fuse Fitness, www.thefusefitnessstudio.com