I had an old coach always talk about finding things that we can use as indicators for success. I feel that progress would be more suitable than “success” in this case but the same rules apply.
He said he would do this because everyone is always so focused on one single factor and never looks at the hundreds of other things that might be improving along the way.
Now think about It, how many of us have a goal in mind (feeling better, moving better, losing body fat) and then we use the scale as our only indicator of success?
What about everything else? Has nothing improved just because the scale hasn’t moved?
What if we take 5-6 indicator topics that can show if things are progressing, stalling, or regressing? Maybe after a full month into your exercise plan you haven’t lost any weight.
BUT…
You did—> Change your eating habits, add two hours to your nightly sleep, have less joint pain, and have gotten stronger. Sounds like things are working to me!
What are some good indicator measures?
The way I like to look at these measures are in categories.
We can break them up into:
Gym Measures
Nutrition Measures
Sleep Measures
Lifestyle Measures
There are so many more but for today let’s focus on these.
Gym Measures
For our gym measures, we can look at things like strength, movement, and consistency.
With any type of measurement we do need to have a starting point for just about everything. This is why I love keeping a workout log or journal to track all your sessions.
When It comes to strength, at the beginning It is good to just look at every exercise you are doing. Is everything getting stronger? I sure as hell hope so!
As you become more advanced I like to pick certain exercises to use as my strength indicators— Chin-ups, Push-ups, Trap bar deadlifts, Squats (goblet or barbell). These are ones I use for myself and a good amount of clients as well.
Your workout log will also stare you in the face about your consistency. Date every workout and see how many sessions you made during your first month and how many you missed. Now compare those numbers month over month.
For movement, this will be more subjective. You might not always have a perfect measure of how your body is moving or performing in the gym. But you will have a general idea how you are feeling and moving during each session.
Nutrition Measures
When It comes to nutrition things can be all over the place with all the different diets and styles of eating.
What I have talked about in the past is focusing on getting enough protein, eating quality whole foods, and limiting processed foods.
These can be a good starting point for indicators.
How much protein have you been eating daily?
How much of your food is comprised of whole foods?
How much of your food is comprised of processed foods?
Now, this can just be a starting point, there are SO MANY other targets you can have with nutrition. But for the sake of this article, we are trying to find indicators of progress, and we have to start somewhere.
Sleep Measures
Sleep is boring but sleep is a HUGE factor.
Do a quick look at your current sleep.
What time are you going to bed?
How much screen time are you having before bed?
How many hours are you sleeping?
How often do you wake up during the night?
Now if you sleep sucks, any progress in any of these areas is a plus. Off the bat these changes don’t have to be massive, small changes over time create big change down the line.
But finding a few indicators of your sleep quality and improving on each one slowly can create some significant changes to your sleep that will carry over to just about every other factor.
Lifestyle Measures
Every single one of these indicator measures will be individual for you and your situation but especially when It comes to lifestyle. I do not know you, your situation, schedule, I don’t know anything about you.
With that, some of the lifestyle indicators we use often are:
Daily activity
Walks per week
Levels of stress
Healthy relationships
These things have a bigger impact on our overall health and progress than we ever give them credit for. Our body is an entity that thrives in a positive environment.
If you are stressed with shitty relationships and don’t move throughout the day, you are going to have a harder time seeing change in the right direction than someone that creates good habits around these things.
We can pair daily activity and weekly walks together. But we need our body’s to move every single day. If you can’t move while you are at work then It’s time to schedule a daily walk somewhere in there to get your movement in.
Motion is lotion!
Same things go for stress. How are you managing It? Is It improving? What is being done to lower your stress levels?
Find these things out, find what works for you, and take steps in the right direction.
Now relationships is a tough one. I do remember listening to a podcast that explained the negative effects poor relationships can have on your body. The amount of pull relationships has on your everyday life is staggering.
This is why we need to make sure we are nurturing good relationships and eliminating poor ones. Interact with the people that build you up and believe in you. Expel the people that bring you down and cause pain in your life.
Now these indicator examples are nowhere near the limit. You can use just about any indication you can find that shows true progress. The idea is to find things that encourage us to keep moving forward.
When progress is stalled, so is our motivation to keep pushing forward.
Focusing on one single factor to measure progress is not easy. Things do not move in a linear fashion, reasons why I love using multiple indicator measures to track progress.
Find a few measures for yourself and check in on them monthly. If one isn’t moving, how are the others doing? If even one single thing is progressing then things are working!
In good health,
Jeff
