Firecracker Fitness
Setting goals is an influential process for personal development. The process of setting goals helps you decide what you want to achieve for yourself. By accurately knowing what you want to attain, you identify where you have to focus your efforts. When goals are compared with your everyday performance they act as motivators.
 Goal setting for yourself is easy to do; however, actually following through and achieving your goal is another story. Providing yourself with a list of goals allows you to be pushing forward to achieve something, and if you do meet your goals, you will have a wonderful feeling of accomplishment. A person can have many different types of goals which fall under the headings of long term and short term. These goals can allow for long-term ideas and short-term inspiration. Setting goals helps you focus on gaining knowledge and organize your priorities enabling you to make the very most of your life. Your health and physical shape will determine the goals you set for yourself. Your goals can cover categories like; strength conditioning, losing fat, gaining muscle, health, etc.
Some good examples of general goals are:
Long term goals
- Increase from walking 1 mile, to jogging and walking, then all jogging. Then increase your distance over time
- Improve your time for walking and then later running the mile.
- Reduce your body fat, by building certain % of muscle
- Schedule yourself to eventually participate in some kind of run/walk event.
Short term goals
- Cardio 3 times a week for 30 minutes to work on building your endurance to workout
- Exercise using an exercise video twice a week (Long term do 5 times a week)
- If you are trying to lose weight I suggest, lose 2 pounds a week with diet and exercise (long term would be a goal of 10lbs. in 5 weeks)
- Encourage a friend to participate (eventually influence more of your friends to participate)
- Add a new sport such as tennis or something you would enjoy
When you are working on a project like this, it is smart to keep a daily journal of your fitness activities and your food intake. Keeping a journal helps you keep track of how you are doing, makes you accountable each day to watch yourself, and makes you aware of your health habits. You will also quickly realize the distractions that would otherwise entice you away from your course. So remember, if you just stay focused on your goals, you will not stray off the route to your success.
Here is an example of my journal for a day:
Monday
Breakfast- 1 cup cereal with 2% milk
Lunch- Turkey sandwich on wheat bread and yogurt
Snack- chips and dip
Dinner- Grilled chicken breast w/ green beans and mashed potatoes
Workout- Elliptical 25min/Weights 20 min
*Some goals I set for when I eat are; to use fat-free milk, eat baked chips and salsa, and move more towards baked potatoes.
* Some goals for when I exercise are; to increase the time I do cardio and include jogging into my workout, lift weights longer and gradually increase my weight, and to include stretching into my workouts.
There are some guidelines to goal setting that you will want to remember:
- Make sure the goal you are working for is something you really want, not just something that sounds good.
- Make sure that the goals you set for yourself are realistic.
- Don’t have one of your goals contradict another.
- Write your goals in a positive format.
- Be sure to write down all of your goals somewhere you will be able to look at every few days.
- Set specific goals.
Once you have set goals for yourself and you achieve one, give yourself a reward. Rewards are often associated with work, so if you accomplished what you set out to do, there was work involved. Also, if you believe that you will be rewarded when you are finished, that belief will sometimes increase your performance level. Start setting goals for yourself today and allow yourself to get motivated to reach them. Good Luck!!!
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