Tired of setting New Year’s Resolutions, only to hit January and never really get started, or you go out full force only to burn out, get injured or give up within a few weeks because you never had a realistic solid action plan?

There is never a right time to start working on your goals, life will always throw curve balls, so don’t wait, start right now only this time make sure you set yourself up for success!

OUTCOME VS BEHAVIOUR GOALS

I often hear goals such as “I want to lose 10kgs” or “I want to get fit”. Whilst there’s nothing wrong with setting this kind of goal, this is more a long-term vision of what you ultimately want to achieve and what one would call “outcome-based”. On their own, outcome-based goals most often fizzle out to nothing if there is no action plan in place to strategically achieve them. While it’s important to have a significant vision of the final desired outcome, we need to drill down further to determine what our behavioural goals are that will allow us to focus on and practice actions that are within our control. This is the foundation on which skills are built which will allow us to move forward to achieve our outcome goals.

GOALS, SKILLS AND DAILY PRACTICES

In order to achieve the final outcome goal, we need to learn new skills in order to reach behaviour goals. Broken down further, in order to develop these new skills, we need to action daily practices.

Let’s take an example where the outcome goal is to lose weight. In this example, the behavioural goal might be to be able to eat better consistently. In order to achieve this an important skill to learn might be appetite and hunger awareness and in order to learn this skill, the daily practice might be eating slowly

This is at the core of my nutrition coaching program based on the Precision Nutrition System, a habit-based coaching program that teaches clients to practice healthy habits consistently as a lifestyle. Daily practices create healthy habits and so we get clients to practice specific daily actions for 2 weeks at a time until a skill is built before moving onto the next one. Step by step, essential skills are built progressively to reach behavioural goals which pave the way to achieving that end desired outcome goal

For more information on my Nutrition Coaching program click here

ENJOY THE JOURNEY

Rather than focusing on the outcome or a performance goal such as a Personal Best (PB) for a race, focus on mastering the necessary skills and enjoying the journey along the way. You can’t control the conditions on race day, you may get sick or the weather may be bad, but if you have trained consistently and strategically, no matter what happens on the day, savour the hard work you have put in and be proud of how far you have come and the skills you have learnt. If you take this positive attitude, you will grow and perform even better for the next one.

SOME TIPS WHEN SETTING GOALS & DETERMINING YOUR ACTION PLAN

• Keep it simple, manageable and sequential: Break up daily actions to practice into achievable chunks, small steps at a time that are manageable and that you can confidently practice consistently and progressively
• Don’t aim for perfection or an all or nothing approach – just aim to be 1% better than yesterday – these small steps practiced consistently will lead to big results
• Set a realistic time-frame to achieve your goals
• Put in regular progress checks to make sure you are on track and revise your goal or action plan if needed
• Make sure you have the necessary support system in place to ensure your success, this could be friends, family, a team-mate or if needed a coach or mentor

I’d Like To Share One Of My Own 2020 Outcome Goals With You And My Action Plan To Get There:

Outcome Goal: 50 Continuous Men’s Push Ups

Time-Frame to achieve goal: 4 Months

Previous Record: 20 continuous reps in 2017

History:

• No Men’s Push Ups for the last 2 years due to weight gain to 81.5kg and recurring shoulder injury
• Have never been able to keep up push up strength or do more than 20 continuous – in past I have always gone out too fast too soon without a strategic action plan, got injured and then not maintained my strength. Also because of not maintaining healthy weight, body weight has been too heavy to even try over the last two years – Click on the link to read about my weight gain struggle in my blog titled “My Personal Story”
• Start date of action plan: 27 January 2020 (weight 69.5kg) – struggle to even complete one quality men’s push up

My Action Plan:

• Using my 2 week approach as I do in my Nutrition Coaching Program, I have broken my 16 week goal into 2-3 week manageable chunks. I am confident that I can score a 9 or 10 out of 10 on actioning this task every day
• In weeks 1-2, I have to practice 10 men’s quality push ups every day, they don’t have to be continuous at first as long as the total daily number is 10. By the end of week 2, I must be able to do 10 continuously
• In weeks 3-4, I will need to increase the total daily number to 20 reps, progressing slowly so that by the end of week 4, I can do 20 continuously and feel comfortable
• Every 2-3 weeks from there, I will need to progress with additional reps, revising my plan if my score falls below a 9/10 in terms of my ability to complete the daily action
• In addition to my daily push up practice, I will be running between 6-10km, 3 times a week once my cycling training for the Argus is over to maintain my cardio fitness, doing 20 minute High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) workouts twice a week to build and maintain muscular and strength endurance, and spending 10 minutes on focused stretching daily to ensure I recover and can maintain my training consistently without getting injured
• Maintain healthy eating habits consistently to fuel my energy and recovery and make sure I get enough quality sleep

Click here to see my progress video at the end of week 2 performing my 10 continuous reps – I look forward to sharing my journey with you over the next few weeks and I hope to inspire you to get going with your own goals in the process

To sum up:

• Whatever your goals, start with a vision, break it down and figure out what skills are needed to achieve your goal
• Further breakdown into daily actions or practices needed to build the necessary skills
• Get the support of a coach or mentor if needed to help you pave your action plan and put it into practice
• Most importantly, remember to enjoy the journey along the way 😊
• Don’t try to be perfect – just try to be 1% better than yesterday and be consistent

What are you waiting for?  Go out and thrash those 2020 goals!

Good Luck