Organized, Systematic Approaches to Fitness

Assess for Success

• It is nearly impossible to reach your goal if you don’t know your specific strengths and weaknesses. A proper fitness assessment is the first step toward achieving fitness success. Whatever area you would like to improve, you should assess. For example, if you want to lose fat, take circumference measurements of the areas you'd like to reduce. Have a personal trainer perform a body composition test to establish your baseline body-fat percentage. Remember, what gets measured can get improved. Write down your baseline numbers and put them in a visible place, such as your refrigerator.

Set Some Goals

• Once you have completed your fitness assessment, it’s time to take your numbers and come up with realistic goals. Your goals should follow the SMART criteria: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. Your goal should pinpoint specific aspects of fitness such as strength or fat loss. Ensure that your goal can be objectively measured, for example, by taking a body fat test for weight loss goals or a 10-rep-max test for strength. Avoid setting extreme goals. Rather, set a moderately difficult goal that you're confident you can achieve. Set a time limit on your goal to provide an adequate sense of urgency. Instead of saying, “I want to lose fat,” say, “I will lose eight pounds of body fat in the next four weeks.” Write down all of your SMART goals and place them near your bed or on your refrigerator. Remember, it's impossible to reach your destination if you don't know where you're going.

Become a Mastermind

• Becoming the mastermind of your fitness plan doesn’t mean getting into rocket science; it simply means that you’ll need to think ahead and plan your program in advance. One of the most common reasons for not achieving fitness goals is lack of planning. Write out your program at least one month in advance. When you walk into the gym, you should be able to look at your workout journal and know exactly which exercises you’re going to do. Fitness hopefuls who go to the gym without a plan tend to gear their workout toward what they’re already good at, which leads to suboptimal results.

The 2-Dollar Answer

• Your key to fitness success can be purchased for 2 dollars at a supermarket: a pen. Yes, charting your workout with a piece of paper and a pen is one of the most important aspects of your systemized approach to fitness. Achieving your goal, whether it be fat loss or muscle gain, works off the principle of progressive overload. "Progressive overload" is a fancy way of saying, "do a little bit more each week." Without charting your workouts, you have no way of remembering exactly what you did in the past week, which makes it impossible to overload. Everything you do in the gym must be charted. If you performed three sets of bench presses with 100 pounds, write it down so that you know your goal for next week is 105 pounds. Fitness success comes from progressive overload, but you cannot do this without a pen.

You're Awesome -- Acknowledge It!

• Attaining a fitness goal is hard work, so make sure that your determination doesn't go unnoticed. Reward yourself for major and minor successes along the way. If you go a week staying on your eating plan or completing all of your workouts successfully, you deserve a reward. Give yourself a treat. Go to a movie or plan a family event when you achieve your goals. Also, be prepared for minor failures, as these are a part of the process. Don't allow yourself to become discouraged when you fail. Keep in mind that failure is fertilizer for success, and use your failures to make you stronger. It's not the stumble that counts. It's the getting back up after the fall.