Fitness Goals: New Year - New Beginnings

The New Year is always an exciting time of new beginnings, especially in the fitness industry!  You probably have many clients setting New Year’s resolutions and planning out their 2016 fitness goals.  By utilizing MYZONE's group heart rate monitoring system provides you with great tools to facilitate goal setting and to monitor your clients’ progress toward their goals.

As you know, the intention of setting fitness goals is to provide focused energy that helps your clients stick to a program and be more effective.

To assist your clients in setting effective goals and in tracking their progress, we recommend coaching your clients through this three-step process:

Write it down.  Putting goals on paper solidifies commitment.

Say it out loud (to some friends).  Sharing goals out loud increases ownership and recruits folks to serve as accountability partners.  You can teach your clients how to establish a solid network of MyZone Connections that will provide a support team as they crush their goals.

Plan ahead.  Mapping out a path will help your clients move toward accomplishing their goals.  Weekly, monthly, and yearly goals will help them stay on track.

As you help your clients formulate their goals, we recommend you encourage them to be as specific as possible and use a balance of two different types of goals: outcome and process goals.  Outcome goals focus on the desired final product that they would like to accomplish.  Process goals are behavioral goals and focus on behavior change and habit formation.  Mapping out process goals will provide a method for achieving their outcome goals.  Here is what your clients’ goal setting adventures could look like:

Outcome goals focus on the end product.  Here are two examples:

I will be able to run a 10k in June in under 56 minutes (just under 9 minutes per mile pace).

I will be able to do 25 consecutive pushups by March 30^th.

Process goals identify a specific behavior during a workout session or a period of time.  Here are two examples of process goals that support the outcome goal examples above:

I will run three days per week from now until June (you could go into even greater detail about the distance and the pace you will run each week).

I will perform two rounds of 10 pushups at least two days per week.

Notice that the examples above describe specific, measurable and realistic goals. Far too often, New Years Resolutions involve an all-or-none approach to goal setting, and they often focus on aesthetics (such as having a 6-pack by June), rather than behaviors. When these extreme outcome goals aren’t achieved quickly, your clients may become discouraged and give up altogether. As you know, fitness is a lifelong endeavor, so clients need to set goals that promote a long-term commitment.

This is why we recommend that you coach your clients to make outcome and process goals and focus more on making realistic changes in their daily routine. Consistency will allow them to achieve their goals over time.

The MyZone system makes it easy to set outcome and process goals that will improve your clients’ adherence to an exercise program. Here are two examples of outcome goals using MyZone:

I will earn at least 1,200 MEPs each month for the year

I will burn 2,000-2,500 calories per week from exercise

And their corresponding process goals:

I will consistently earn at least 300 MEPs per week by working out 3-5 days per week

I will burn 400-500 calories per workout session for 4-5 sessions each week

Using measurements provided by MyZone (MEPs and calories) makes it simple to track your clients’ workout effort and overall progress. Encourage your clients to share their goals and progress with us by using the hashtags #myzonemoves and #effortrewarded when they post to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!