Achieving Your Goals

Obviously, I've been quite busy this month (and if you've been listening to the FitCast, you know why!). Today, however, all of the work that I've been putting in, not only this past month but the past 34 months, will finally pay off.

Today I will be attending my final scheduled lecture in graduate school.

I'm not quite finished with school entirely, of course: we've got research presentations and submissions for publication taking place in January, as well as our final two clinical rotations which will take us through March of '09. But this is still a major milestone, and it feels terrific!

Achieving predetermined goals is an excellent way to maintain our motivation and focus, not only in school but in the gym as well. In order for these goals to be effective, they need to be realistic and achievable, which unfortunately hasn't always been the case with many of the individuals that I have consulted in the past.

While "I want to lose 10 pounds in 10 weeks" might sound like a great goal to set before a family reunion, or "I want to increase my bench press by 50 pounds before Spring Break" might be every male college sophomore's sure-fire plan to not get sand kicked in his face in Cancun, they may not be. The problem is in the achievability of those goals. There are a number of factors that will play into accomplishing these weight loss or strength gains within a given time-frame, and it can be devestating not to achieve those goals, especially when you did everything right.

For athletes, this is a normal aspect of sport. Top-level athletes have their entire training schedule built around peaking at the exact time for an exact event during their training cycle: for Micheal Phelps, that might be every 4 years at the Olympics; for Eli Manning it might be the playoffs every January. For the rest of us that don't make a living from our on-field (or in-pool) performance, it doesn't always make sense for us to base our goals on the same parameters.

Build your goals around the things that you can control throughout your day, such as committing yourself to going to the gym 3x/week, or sticking to your diet for a week without cheats, or going to sleep every night by 11 p.m. and not staying up late. These are realistic and achievable goals that, when adhered to and accomplished, will help you towards achieveing the bigger goals: losing 10 pounds so that your Aunt Edna doesn't raise her eyebrow at you when you reach for seconds at dinner!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to finish my last presentation for class, due this afternoon. I'm going to miss grad school...but I won't miss writing papers!

-Jonathan