Setting Exercise Goals for the New Year

This article covers three tips for setting exercise goals for the new year. It includes the conversation as seen in the video SEATED RESISTANCE BAND EXERCISE ROUTINE & Setting Exercise Goals For The New Year.

As we are in January, it is likely many of us have either set goals or thought about setting goals for the new year. This article touches on the challenge related to goals setting with chronic pain or injury, how to make goal setting simple, and one way to avoid the trap of setting unachievable goals.

Tip 1: Set a 12 week goal

While the new year is a good time to set goals around health and fitness, due to the feeling of a fresh start, the question of “will I achieve this goal” is often in the back of our minds. Achieving goals can be even more challenging when experiencing chronic pain or injury. This is because pain or injury flare up’s can interrupt progress, make daily life more difficult, or make goals seem unattainable.

It can be easy to give up on setting new year resolutions or goals, however I would like to send a message of encouragement to say that it is still possible to set goals related to exercise despite chronic pain, impairment, or injury.

When thinking about setting a goal for the new year, one challenge is the length of time in a year. Thankfully, it doesn’t take 52 weeks to see improvements in fitness, but that does raise questions around when to start a goal, when to finish, or how many goals to set during this period. Thankfully, there is a solution to this predicament.

A simple way to overcome this annual goal setting predicament, is to set the goal in line with typical exercise plans which are often 8 to 12 weeks. Setting a smaller 12 week goal can be much more achievable than setting a 52 week goal and fits well with quarterly goal setting methods like the 12 week year.

If you are feeling daunted by the prospect of goal setting for exercise of feel discouraged because of not achieving your goals in the past, I encourage you to set one goal that could be achieved in 8 to 12 weeks.

Tip 2. Differentiate the goal from habits

One important point when it comes to achieving goals, is differentiating the goal from the actions or habits used to achieve the goal. A goal is a clear outcome. Actions or habits are the steps taken to get to that outcome. For example, completing a 3km walkathon in April is one clear outcome or goal. Exercising 3 times per week is the action or habit needed to achieve that outcome.

Using archery as an analogy, the goal is to hit the target, shooting the arrows is the action needed to hit the target. The target informs the shooting direction, similarly the goal informs the direction of our actions or habits.

One of the biggest mistakes in goal setting is mistaking actions for goals. For example, saying that exercising 3 times per week for 12 weeks is the goal. The reason this is a mistake, is because there are so many opportunities for failure, in fact 36 total opportunities for failure in this example. Goal setting this way can be particularly disheartening if experiencing chronic pain or injury which often interrupt exercise plans at unanticipated times.

With the walkathon event as the outcome, it does not matter so much if workouts are rescheduled, adapted, or even missed on occasion. It’s highly likely that with the completion of most of the actions i.e. exercising 3 times per week most weeks, the goal of completing the walkathon will be achieved. 

Tip 3: Build in contingency 

If uncertain where to start, write down 1 to 3 hurdles that interrupted the achievement of your goal in the past. This might be a chronic injury or pain flare up, a family emergency, or financial difficulty. Consider adding contingency into your new plan to account for similar challenges. For example, in a 12 week exercise plan with 3 workouts per week, rather than planning to complete 36 workouts plan to complete 30. This means you can go in to your plan with the intention of 3 workouts per week but have built in flexibility for facing unanticipated hurdles.

In summary, this article covered some ideas for goal setting in the new year. This included encouragement that it is possible to have goals despite chronic pain, injury, or impairment; how to simplify setting an exercise goal by choosing one goal that is achievable over an 8 to 12 week period, and how to increase the likelihood of achieving your goal by differentiating the goal from actions or habits.

I hope this article has been helpful. If you would like to watch the exercises in this routine, the accompanying video can be found on the Age Fit with Tess Youtube channel here. To continue to manage pain, build strength, and gain fitness in the meantime refer to the Age Fit with Tess blog. See you next time.