Time to revisit your goals.
Like I said in my last blog 3 months into the year and your still on track! Feeling good and now you’ve started seeing some progress too. Whether your goals are weight-loss, fitness or improving how you feel, the progress your seeing is a real boost to your motivation!
After 3 months or 12 weeks it's time to start ‘tweaking’ your goals and program. If you employ a PT then this is up to them, they should be asking you if you still want to achieve the same or if your goals have changed. They may have changed due to you feeling more confident in your abilities, a new important date on the horizon has popped up or that you’ve decided to push yourself that bit further. All these things mean that to push-on and progress more the program needs to be revisited as do your goals.
Remember your goals are short, medium and long range, so start of with what you want to achieve at every session (daily/weekly) then each block of 4 weeks and finally your end-goals. Obviously your long range goal is THE one that will inspire you the most hopefully, the short and medium ones will help your commitment and enthusiasm keep ticking over.
An example of setting goals is what my targets are for the long-term. My long term goal is the World Championships in Paris next February but that seems an awful long time away. So my medium goals are the progress I see every 4 week cycle and my short term goals are the results of my weekly sessions. It's a simple way to keep focus and commitment going as it's easy to lose sight of ‘the end game’ if you have nothing to work towards. It makes the whole length of the training period much more interesting and within that you can set yourself little PB targets along the way such as deadlift PB or distance row time trials, all of these challenges will keep you ticking over and hungry for progress.
Obviously if you’re lucky enough to have the help and support of a PT most of the motivational work will be handled by them. They should be able to gauge how their client is feeling by their body language and also the feedback they give regarding their sessions. I have just started adding a bit of ‘homework’ for my clients. As some of the sessions I are offer cover work on the indoor rowing machine many of my clients row 1-2 extra sessions either at home on their rower or at the gym. So to still have the structure in their fitness program I write them 1-2 sessions to complete in their own time. I feel this fuels their motivation and also helps push themselves into performing more sessions as they have to give me the results so feel obligated to complete them! I think this is a great tool for a PT, obviously there are some who aren’t interested in extra lessons and that is perfectly fine, but to give your client the option is to give them a chance to challenge themselves even more!
So in the next week get that program out and have a look over it, check out your goals, see if they’ve changed, see what progress your making and whether you need more of a challenge. Look out for my next blog on how to switch up your fitness programs to increase/decrease your intensity.