How do you eat an elephant (sorry vegans!)?
How would you go about it? Upon first glance, it is massive! You may think there’s no way that you could possibly eat the entire thing!
The reality of it is, however, that you would go about it the same way you would eat an apple, a burger, a slice of pizza, or your grandma’s famous pumpkin pie — One bite at a time!
The same goes for your fitness. You can walk into the gym, and see someone stringing together muscle-ups, and think “wow, I would love to be able to do that,” and get up on the rig to try it, and find yourself just hanging there, not knowing what to do. It would be ridiculous for us to think that we could eat an entire elephant in one sitting, so why do we get so hard on ourselves when we are unable to master a new skill on the first try?
In order to do a muscle-up, it takes skill, agility, strength, speed, coordination, and so many other things! Luckily, these are things that can be trained and/or practiced. If doing a muscle-up is your overarching, long-term goal, there are smaller goals that we must hit first, along the way.
You must have the strength to do a strict pull-up and a chest-to-bar pull-up, while also having the skills to do kip swings, kipping pull-ups, kipping chest-to-bar pull-ups, etc…you get the point! There are things and tasks you must first complete before we can achieve our overall goal…So how do you set these goals?
Every goal we make must be 5 things:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant/Realistic
- Time Bound
How do you know if your goal has these 5 characteristics? I’m glad you asked!
To tell if your goal is Specific, you must ask yourself 5 questions. Using the example of the muscle-up:
What do I want to accomplish? I want to be able to string together bar muscle-ups.
Why is this important to me? I want to be able to complete the workouts in the 2021 CrossFit Open as prescribed.
Who is involved? My coaches and other athletes
Where is it located? Perpetual Fitness, Inc.
Which resources or limits are involved? The coordination and agility necessary to bring myself over-top of the bar.
To tell if your goal is Measurable, you must quantify your goal. So instead of just saying, “I want to string together bar muscle-ups,” we must say, “I want to string together 5 bar muscle-ups.”
To tell if your goal is Achievable, we must stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone. This is where most people struggle. It is very easy to set a goal for ourselves that is too achievable, meaning, we could do it in our sleep…that is not the idea here. We want to bring light to the ways we can better ourselves to accomplish our goals to make them achievable. You must ask yourself what you can do to make this goal a reality. Going back to the bar muscle-ups, I will spend an hour a week practicing. I will book a 30 minute skills session with my coach every week and spend another 30 minutes completing the assigned homework before or after class.
To tell if your goal is Relevant/Realistic, we have to make sure that it is, in fact, important to us. Is it worthwhile to you, is now the right time, does it match with our other goals and needs? If you can say “yes” to all these questions, then your goal passes the test!
To tell if your goal is Time Bound, you simply have to put a time as to when you will have it accomplished by. Look at where you are today, where you can be 1 month from now, 6 months from now, maybe even a year from now, and pick an end point.
At this point, you should have a very detailed goal and be able to tell everyone what it is, and how you are going to achieve it. For example, I will be able to string together 5 bar muscle-ups before the CrossFit Open in 2021, because I am going to train my coordination and agility by practicing an hour each week.
Whether your goal is to eat an entire elephant, string together bar muscle-ups, make $1,000,000, lose 20 pounds, or hold your breath underwater for 3 minutes straight, you have to set a goal, make a plan, attack the goal, and amazing things will happen!
One more thing…
Any goal worth accomplishing is going to come with hurdles along the way. The most common factor in not achieving the goal that we set is typically a result of not expecting challenges, not knowing how to overcome them, and/or forgetting why we even started in the first place. For this reason, a great coach who believes in you and can help lift you over the speed bumps by holding you accountable, guiding you back on course, and providing prospective is often the difference between achievement and remaining stagnant. If you need help reaching your goals or getting back on track, book a No Sweat Intro or (for current members) athlete check-in and we will do whatever we can to help!