Posts tagged goal setting
Tracking Your Progress

By: Marcos Hernandez:

“If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there” – Lewis Carroll

We all learned in math class that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Most people know one endpoint of this line, where they want to go, their goals. Everyone’s goals will be different and typically fall under the categories of performance, health, or body composition/aesthetic related. 

Having a goal, a point b, is certainly important. However, in order to make progress towards your end goal, you need a starting point for reference, a point a. Your coach can help you draw the line between these points, but how can we help without an accurate starting point? If the finish line is point b, how are you assessing your point a? 

This is where tracking comes in.

Tracking comes in three tiers: daily/weekly, monthly, and yearly.

Daily/Weekly (Performance):

This is the small stuff, the things that need to be written down early or else they will be forgotten.

Workouts: Write down the weight you use on the lift of the day, and write down the time you got in the day’s conditioning. It’s important to know what we did in the past so you can improve week to week, even if it means you are using the 1.25lb change plates. More math: What’s 2.5*52? (1.25lb plate on each side, 52 weeks in a year). This kind of linear growth isn’t possible indefinitely but you get the idea. People either use a workout journal and write it by hand, use an app on their phone like Beyond the Whiteboardor take a picture for reference.

Food Log:This is often the most illuminating, especially for those who have goals related to body composition. Try either writing it down in a journal or using an app like MyFitnessPal. Even the act of writing it down might be good motivation to skip that dessert, but if you do indulge write it down and keep it moving, no need to dwell on the treat. Remember, the food log only works if you’re honest and record everything, not just the healthy stuff.  

Sleep tracking:There are lots of apps and devices out there, and a quick search will turn up plenty of suggestions. But be aware of how many hours you sleep each night, and your sleep/rise times, shooting for anywhere from 7-9 hours.

Monthly (Aesthetic/Body Composition):

This is the best timeframe to measure body composition.DON’T track your weight on a daily basis. It fluctuates wildly and leads to all sorts of value judgments. Instead take pictures of yourself in your underwear. Do it at the same time of day and in the same mirror so you can see the difference when doing a side by side comparison. Similarly, track how your clothes are fitting and take pictures in some of your normal outfits for further evidence of changes to your body’s shape.

Yearly (Health):

This is the level dedicated to health, and a reasonable timescale for how long hard work takes to show up. There are two recommended ways to track here: blood work and, if desired, a DEXA scan.

The blood work will be reviewed by your doctor and they can tell you how your various short and long term health markers are looking as well as any if potential interventions or adjustments are necessary to keep you healthy.

A DEXA scan is the scientific way to measure body fat percentage and bone density. This is useful information if weight loss is necessary for your health, as recommended by your doctor, or you are getting up in years and need to make sure your bones are robust and able to support you for years to come.

In conclusion, your coaches can help you determine the quickest route to your goals but they have to know where you are. Come armed with this type of information, or be ready to keep track of this information, if you really want to make some progress!

Dan John’s “Secrets” Of Peaking & Achieving Goals:

1.    First, realize that you are powerless NOT to do something stupid. So, accept that. Embrace it. Now, promise yourself the following: The Goal is to Keep the Goal the Goal. Anything you add to your plan that is NOT part of the goal is going to be the problem. Don’t do it.

 

2.    Pieces of paper are cheaper than surgeries. Write out your goals, a specific date to achieve them, and a general plan from what has worked in the past and what has worked for others. This is 99% of success in planning.

 

3.    Grab a calendar and make a few big red letter “X’s” on dates where you know things are coming up. Now, don’t be surprised when things come up. Next, take a yellow highlighter and highlight the days with “issues.” It could be something as simple as school finals or appointments for the dog.

 

4.    Steal other people’s paths. There is a ton of information available for anything you are attempting. Success leaves tracks: follow them.

 

5.    Assemble the tools, supplies and information needed for correctives. If you are going to use a foam roller in this program, get a foam roller. Allow about ten percent of your training time to restorative work, correctives, mobility, flexibility, sauna, hot tub or any kind of stuff that you think helps.

 

6.    If you are involved in a sport, 80% of your training time should be doing the activity. For most, ten percent of your time should be on developing strength, another ten on correctives (planned recovery), but the bulk should be on the specific activity.

 

7.    For most situations, the day before competition should be an 80% day (hard to define, but most people have a feel for that), but TWO days before should be 60%, perhaps just a warm-up. The “Two Day Lag Rule” has survived the test of time. If the event is really important completely rest three days before and perhaps four days before, if possible. Don’t try to stuff weeks, months or years of work in the last week.

 

8.    The airline industry was made safer because of checklists. Use this simple formula for success: make checklists and follow them. If you need them for your warm-up or mobility work or whatever, make them. I am reminded of the football team that showed up to a game without footballs. I remember this because I was the head coach. Use your lists to free up space in your brain to focus on the work at hand.

 

9.    Evaluate any program or system every two weeks. Make small course corrections when you are still basically on target.

 

10. Be sure (!!!) to plan something for the successful completion of the program, season or system. Look “after” the finish line, so to speak. Answer “Now what?” long before you come to that point.

Most Of Life Is Showing Up

“Most of life is showing up. You do the best you can, which varies from day to day.” - Regina Brett


What’s the secret to long term, sustainable progress in the gym? If I had to provide one simple, actionable piece of advice, it would be this: show up! We’ve all heard it before, but the saying really does hold true, especially in the realm of fitness, health, and longevity. When it comes to improving physical capacity, strength, technique, flexibility, etc. frequency of exposure is a critical variable for success. What we see here at the gym is that there is a direct through line from class attendance to improvement in all the meaningful ways we measure progress and success (better performance, body composition, technical skill, recovery capacity, etc.). Simply put, there are no shortcuts or replacements for doing the work, week in and week out. You can give maximum effort two days a week, but you’re not going to see the same progress as someone who is also working hard and training 4-5 days per week. There are a few caveats here of course: we’ve all got different schedules, goals, and recovery capacities. Let’s look at each of these individually:
 
Schedules: Your schedule might be such that you can’t train every day, even if you’d like to. You don’t need to train everyday to get better, but you do need to be consistent. We recommend 3x / week as a minimum effective dose to aim for. This might mean coming in at 6am if you’re busy in the evening, later at night after a long day at work, or on Saturday morning before your weekend plans kick in. Recognize we all have the same 24 hours in the day and plan your workouts accordingly, even if that means setting the alarm a little earlier than you’d like. Progress or excuses, the choice is yours!
 
Goals: What are your goals? What are you training for? How do you measure success? Taking time to answer these questions will help us mold and adapt our programs to best meet your needs as an athlete. Most people are simply training for the rigors of daily life and don’t have a particular sport, event, or competition on their calendar. If you do play a sport, are training for a race, or have some other specific pursuit in mind, CrossFit should serve as your general preparatory training that supports all those activities. CrossFit should enhance, not detract, from your other physical pursuits, so there is likely a need to be mindful of both weekly volume and intensity, especially when in-season or near competition. If you’ve got specific goals, talk to a coach about a smart plan to achieve them and how to best incorporate CrossFit with any outside physical pursuits you may have.
 
Recovery Capacity / Experience Level: CrossFit is hard. There’s a learning curve when it comes to getting better, and progress can be slow and difficult at times. Rarely does someone come in with the baseline level of fitness and skills required to train 4-6 days / week, nor do they need to. With that being said, the body is amazing at adapting to the stresses placed upon it. Train 3 days per week until your body acclimates, then consider adding another day. After doing that for a few months, maybe you consider adding another day to your weekly routine. Taking the incremental approach is the best way to avoid burnout and injury. Gradually increase the demands you place on your body so that your capacity to recover from training can keep pace. Allow yourself plenty of runway for steady development and sustained results.
 
We must remind ourselves that daily movement is both restorative and essential to our health, fitness, and wellbeing. In order to maintain vital physical traits such as flexibility, strength, and work capacity, we need to practice and train the fundamental human movements that we focus on daily in CrossFit (push, pull, hinge, squat, carry etc.). The other side of the coin when it comes to increasing your training frequency is the need to manage intensity appropriately. Here’s the motto to live by: long-term consistency trumps short-term intensity. Not only is it okay to take an easy day or leave something in the tank for next time, we encourage it! Priority number one is showing up and moving; let your coaches help you navigate the other relevant variables that drive progress.