Being hyper-focused on a specific goal is not a negative, but what happens when you reach that goal?
I was doing some work from home, getting ready to head back to the gym for afternoon sessions when I saw a woman in her early 30s had booked an appointment to meet to discuss training.
I had no information on who she was, her background, or anything else for that matter. She was coming in soon so I sent her an email explaining how things will go and headed out to meet her at the gym. The one thing I remember vividly was on her submission form she emphasized that she wanted to get started immediately.
I was at the gym for about 20 minutes before the door opened. She walked in, didn’t even take a glance around the gym, but had a big smile on her face. I guess she must be pretty excited to get started? After taking a quick tour of the gym we sat down to get a deeper understanding of what she was looking for.
It was pretty clear what she wanted to talk about – it wasn’t about her background, injury history, or even how she heard about us. What she wanted was to get into the nitty gritty details of her training. Go back and read the first sentence I wrote in this article.
She was hyper-focused . There was a goal, a timeline, and a lot of determination.
Her goal: for her body to look the absolute best it possibly could by her wedding day in 6 months. Looking a certain way is very subjective to the person making that goal, making it hard for me to depict what “absolute best” really meant. As we went deeper, she described these things:
- More muscular/shaped legs
- Drop 5-10lbs
- Define her arm muscles (no larger than they already were but more muscle)
I never want to be discouraging. I always people to feel supported and backed by me at all times. But, I do make sure to manage expectations from the get go. This is what we laid out on day 1:
- Consistency is a non-negotiable
- Patience. Things take time. We will be planning backwards from that 6-month mark to reach her goals. There is no need to reach her end goal in 3 months. We will utilize all the time we have to make things as sustainable as we can.
- The things that go on outside of the gym are just as important as the things inside the gym. Food tracking and nutrition planning will be part of the program. I also needed her to know that sleep and recovery are key components (which I asked about every single session on both those points).
- It will not be a linear path to that end goal. Things will go up and down, how we react to those things will make a big difference.
We trained very hard and consistently for 6 straight months. She had a vacation about halfway through where she ended up working out at the gym in her resort (I’m telling you, she was determined). She trained 4x per week in the gym and took a 30+ minute walk 5x per week. She listened so well along the way and gave very detailed feedback as to how things were going on her end. It made it easy for me to adjust her training and her food because I knew what was going on every day.
I felt the fire she had toward this goal and I fed off of it, there was no way I was going to not hold up my end of the deal.
When it came time for her wedding she was MORE than happy with her results. It’s hard to really see the change you want day in day out but when she looked back at pictures from months before she was ecstatic with her progress. Then off she went to her wedding and honeymoon.
Now what?
When she came back she didn’t have the determination and direction as before. There was no wedding in the near future to push her and motivate the efforts. No party or family reunion she could turn her focus towards. Summer wasn’t even close enough to use as a new goal. This is where workouts were missed and effort in the gym was fading.
The fire was gone. It’s like having the best coffee of your entire life for a week then having to go back to your burnt, watered down crap you have at home. A very underwhelming feeling, exactly how she felt about her workouts at this point.
I set up meetings with her to keep our consistent check-ins going. During these meetings we would do a body scale check and discuss how things are going. These meetings also gave me a chance to voice my thoughts:
- Consistency- no matter how unmotivated you feel, stay consistent.
- Effort- If you want to see any forward progress then you need to work hard.
- Mindset- sustainable good work is going to drive you longer and farther with your health. Start thinking about the long game.
When we started out, I told her what we were going to do was not sustainable long term (which we proved once the wedding was over). Now, I can voice this stuff until the cows come home (which I do, more as a very consistent reminder) but ultimately it is up to her, when she wants to take that next big step forward.
About 3 months after her wedding we set up another check-in. She said she was feeling like crap, not having great workouts, and not enjoying the process of her body losing progress. This is when I knew she was ready.
This is where we made a new plan.
There is no end game when It comes to seeing great progress. You can work your tail off for a few months, but once the foot is off the gas, things begin to fade.
She wanted to get her body back to looking and feeling a certain way- no specific timeline, just a goal that makes her look and feel the way she wants. It’s progressive, and if she wants this to be something she can manage for the long run then we needed to add sustainability into her plan.
That means, moving forward, she should be able to handle this work/process for the rest of her life. I know this sounds extreme, but hear me out.
If you are not planning on doing something long term then you are setting yourself up to fail at some point.
Yes, life will change along the way. Maybe she gets a new job, her family grows, new responsibilities come up. Well, take all the possibilities into consideration, do you see yourself still being able to workout 4-5 times per week and eat this certain way? If the answer is no, your plan is most likely not sustainable.
Timeline Goals
We make goals for ourselves that put a timeline on the work we are doing. Pushing yourself and doing things that you normally wouldn’t do (or even be able to do for extended periods of time).
So what happens when the timeline is up?
You can’t keep up with that style of work forever, can you?
Does that mean it’s time to give up?
In my client’s case, she just took a few steps back. Knowing she couldn’t keep up with her previous work, she let herself settle into a more comfortable routine before ultimately changing her mindset. Now, she wants to find a way to still see great results, but to do so in a way that can fit into her life without taking over her life.
She has balance. She can manage this amount of work. And she is seeing some damn good results.
Things are not moving as fast as they were when she was getting ready for her wedding, but that is not the goal, and she knows that. She knows what she is capable of, which creates the confidence in herself that she WILL get there.
Expectations
When you set a goal for yourself you are creating an expectation. You expect to be at “that” certain point within “this” certain timeline. But there is one piece to this entire puzzle that we are missing.
What happens when you get there?
Your daily habits are the reason you are in your current state/situation (not to say your situation is good or bad, this is just the reality of how this works). You can make as much change to your life as you want and see great results, but if you end up going back to your normal daily habits, everything else will begin moving in that direction as well.
This is why most people who were broke before winning the lottery end up broke after winning the lottery—> their behaviors did not change.
So, when you reach your goal, if your behaviors haven’t changed, things will most likely go right back to your starting point. What’s that word I’ve used 34 times in this article?
Oh yes, sustainability!
Now, this doesn’t mean you should never have an end goal in mind or a certain date that you are working towards. Weddings, family reunions, and vacations come up for my clients all the time. But with those goals, we set the groundwork for what to expect leading up to that point, during that point, and after that point. When the expectations are clearly laid out then we don’t have these periods of “let down” like my client did coming back to the gym after her wedding.
How Do You Make That Plan?
Making these plans would be ALOT easier if we could predict the future, but we can’t. So the first thing we actually do is make a plan, working backwards from the set end date.
If you have a goal to lose 15 pounds in time for a vacation to Mexico in 6 months, then the day you leave is where we start.
So let’s work backwards!
For you to lose 15 pounds in this 6-month span (26 weeks), you will need to lose a little over ½ a pound per week on average (.58). In most cases, depending on how the rest of the process goes, the end of this time period is when you will be eating the least and moving the most. Knowing that, most of your strength building work is going to be done at the beginning of this process.
This is not to say we don’t still work on that along the way, but It is much harder to gain strength in a calorie deficit than It is in a calorie surplus or maintenance. Along the way you might also needs to:
- Track food
- Find calorie maintenance
- Get into a calorie deficit
- Stay consistent with weight training
- Move “x” amount of steps per day (depending on how things are going)
- Eat “x” amount of protein per day (depends on individual variance)
- Drink enough water each day
- Get enough quality sleep each day
And you will need to do just about all of these things consistently for the entire 26 weeks while you track your progress each day, week, and month to drill that goal by the end.
Now before you embark on this plan, you also make a plan of what to do once the trip is over.
What does that discussion look like?
Make sure to cover a few main things.
- Enjoy yourself
Whatever the event or end goal is, you have to celebrate the work you did. Things were tough and you worked your ass off, be happy about that!
- What to expect coming back
Now after the goal is hit and the event or whatever you were working towards is over, you can discuss things after the fact. The main thing I want you to realize is that your motivation is going to be low because you don’t feel like you have the same direction as you did before.
So make a LONGER TERM GOAL that keeps you going after the fact. In the example above the goal is 15 pounds in 6 months. The goal when you get back could be sustaining that weight loss forever. Or getting stronger at that lower bodyweight. Or even just as broad as becoming more mobile to have your joints feel really damn good.
Whatever you choose, have something else to work towards when you get back. I have talked about It in the past with how motivation works
Action->Result->Motivation->Repeat
That first step is TOUGH. But once you see some results from your actions, some motivation will start creeping back in. That’s when it’s time to keep working!
- Types of goals
The original goal in this example was very objective; 15 pounds down. Those goals are absolutely great but they have a direct end once you reach them. You want this new, longer term goal, to be something more subjective. Something that will keep you working towards something for a very long time.
Is there an end date to getting stronger? Being more mobile? Feeling better?
Not at all, but you can most definitely see progress towards every single one of those things.
You reaching your goal should not be the end of the journey. If you want to see long lasting results, then you need to be in this process for a long, LONG time. Once you stop, things slowly start to reverse back in the direction that you most likely do not want them going.
Use your goals as things to work towards, not as an end date to your progress.
Keep moving forward in any way you can!
In good health,
Jeff
