Setting Your Training Goals

I've given you a lot of food for thought as you consider your training program. By now you should have a pretty good idea of what results you want to achieve in your body. Let's take those desired results and develop goals to help you achieve them. The specific outcome you want coupled with the goals you set determines what kind of training program you need to follow.

Be realistic and specific about your goals and plan some short-term goals that you can reach on your way to the final goal. Meeting smaller goals and milestones helps ensure motivation and success over the long run. For example, your ultimate goal might be to lose body fat. This goal is not specific, however, and can't be attained in a week. How about specifying that your long-term goal is to decrease your body fat to 20 percent in 16 weeks, and your short-term goal is to decrease your body fat by 5 percent each month?

Another long-term goal might be to fit into a certain clothing size. You could make your long-term goal to fit comfortably into a size 6 by the summer, and then set short-term goals that reflect decreasing sizes. If your long-term goal is to get stronger, specify how you are going to do it by quantifying your objective. A better long-term goal would be to squat and bench 135 pounds by the end of 8 weeks. Then you could adjust your training and short-term goals to reflect that intention. How about making it a long-term goal to win a powerlifting competition? You have to be realistic and consider your exercise experience and history. If you are a beginner in strength training, then you need to concentrate on the basics for a while and set many short-term goals to attain before you even plan to train for a competition. If you have already been strength training seriously, then you can plan your training cycle so that you will hit your peak on the day of the competition (check out chapter 13).

If you are training for general health and fitness then you won't really have a specific goal-you'll just keep exercising to stay healthy. However, you can monitor some general health markers like heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels on a monthly basis to make sure that you are still on the right track. Your training program will reflect your goal of general health and fitness, and you can incorporate a lot of variety into such a program.

Results-oriented training means that you are training for a specific purpose and that all of your exercises are devoted to that purpose. You don't want to go to the gym and merely get a workout done. You need to have a final destination in mind, and then design a road map to get you there. Having a goal doesn't mean that once the destination is reached, your job is done. On the contrary — here will always be new goals to strive for and new territory to explore.