Back around December/January time I started on a quest to get myself in shape, sometime in January Josh Hanagarne made a post on his blog about his goals for 2010 and asking what other people’s goals were. In this post I set out a few goals that I was interested in achieving over the course of the year, some being much more ambitious than others. Also as the year has gone on I have set myself many other goals as my interests have changed and widened, such as plate curling a 10kg plate and swimming a mile.
Recently I was talking to Adam Glass about all that I have achieved this year and how I felt it was important to set realistic goals for yourself to give you milestones on the way to becoming the best you can possibly be. So with about 3 months left of the year I am now concentrating on the goals I set myself that I have not achieved, the main one being pressing a 32kg kettlebell. I have no doubt that I will achieve this goal by the end of the year because I am training very smart (using biofeedback) and I have a lot of ideas on how to greatly improve my pressing.
Looking back at the goals I have set myself back then I have greatly improved my bending strength, I started with pieces of 5mm hot rolled steel and worked my way through all sorts of grades of metal and I eventually bent some nails, now I can bend them without too much trouble, although I am nowhere close to bending them with the ease displayed by Adam Glass! The goal I am most proud of is my improvement on my two hand pinch, I set out with a goal of getting 50kg, this was actually accomplished in my first grip competition in January, since then I have progressed up to lifting 67kg in competition and was more than my bodyweight which is an awesome feat that very few people have accomplished.
Adam is always stressing to people the importance of setting goals and ensuring that you keep a good log of your workouts and I fully support this. When you set yourself realistic goals and strive to achieve them it paves the way for awesome improvements to your strength, physique and quality of movement. Sometimes these goals will be long term projects, such as my goal of lifting the dinnie stones, but you can break down such goals into smaller intermediate goals to use as stepping stones. If you want to lose 50lbs of fat then first you need to lose 10lbs, big goals can be daunting and so breaking them down can make them easier to achieve and you can surprise yourself in the end.
Anyway, after 10 months of training I am leaner (from 35″ to 31″ waist), stronger (deadlift up over 40kg), fitter and move better than I did before. I have accomplished many goals I set myself and I keep setting more as I demolish the existing ones, I will continue to get better in as many ways as possible every single day!