Seems that this year there’s a real negative spin on New Years Resolutions…not sure I understand the anger towards them if I’m honest.
I am fully on board with ridding the world of “New Year, New Me” rubbish as there was/is nothing wrong with the old/current you but to completely disregard using January as an opportunity to do new things or have new goals, I just cant get on board with that.
January is a great chance to start a new challenge or start working towards a new goal – especially after the last year (well 2 years) and the hope that in the next month or 2 then the world will be a different place with further relaxing of restrictions and hopefully the need to isolate will be eliminated? Who knows but either way, why not use January as a fresh page for some fitness goals.
So let me talk to you about goals…
First off, they need to be SMART – this means they need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time Bound.
So rather than just say “I want to become a runner” which is a huge goal, break that goal down into smaller pieces and make it attainable. For example – “In the next 10 weeks I am going to complete couch to 5k and run a park run on ** date in March” This means you can actually make steps towards achieving your overarching goal of becoming a runner.
Another simple goal to have is to “move more” but again, that’s not enough. You need to make it measurable so maybe have the goal as “for the next 8 weeks I’m going to get active at least 3 times a week for 30 mins” So you can measure against it and see your progress towards that 8 week time frame.
This January, I’ve been so focused on other people’s fitness goals and making sure they set theirs up, I have actually neglected to set any of my own yet, so here goes. Plus – I’ve written them down and published them so I best stick to them hey!!
So my goals are –
1 – To run 1200km this year. That’s 100km a month, every month for a year – eek!!
2 – To do at least one weight training session every week
3 – To drink 2 litres of water (or 8 glasses) every day (on a side note, I’ve been doing this every day for a week now and my skin feels AMAZING!!)
4 – To try and PB the Manchester Half marathon in October, and to train my biggest ever group of runners to run it too. Not really a SMART goal as it’ll take a lot of steps to do this but it’s definitely one to break down and go for!
Hope this helps you think of some goals for 2022…share them with me and if you need any help making them SMART then just shout