SENSE OF PURPOSE

5.GET A GOAL

Giving yourself a short-term goal will help you push yourself to the next level. I stagnated for a couple of years. I had to halt my usual programs and I had to settle with jogging around whichever neighborhood, while doing only body weight exercises for a quite some time. I eventually bought a couple of dumbbells, and then a pull up bar (that you can hook up on a door) after another couple of months. By the time I got a gym membership, my only goal was to get back to where I left at. Once I felt that I was around 75-80% back, I settled. I always believed that I would not be able to gain any kind of momentum given my crazy schedule which was plagued with night shifts, turnarounds, and occasional 2 week shift marathons. Ever since, I was happy with being within striking distance of any gains or get-back-to-shape runs that could possibly come up. That mindset lasted for YEARS. Oh so pathetic years of stagnation and settlement. Only recently did I feel the sense of purpose come back. Why am I even trying to keep pace if my goal is to be within striking distance of something? If you will eventually do it, why not do it now? And the fun came back. Every training day now has its life back. My 3 short term goals (hopefully short as I do not know how long it will take) are for me to learn and do (correctly) the following : muscle-ups, pistol squats, and one arm pushups. I might swap the handstand (and probably the handstand pushup) into the roster, but eventually I will try to tackle all of those. 

How does having a goal help? It will make you adapt to achieve your goals. You will change your workout, and you will break you plateaus. Having a goal will force you to train differently. You can do so by learning new exercises that will stress your muscles in a different way, or by adding weight to the exercises that you are already doing. Finding a way to achieve your goal will push you further, and will make you work harder. It will break your routine and the thing called fun will return.

This also can apply to other things such as losing weight, gaining strength, jumping higher, etc. What will you change in order to improve yourself based on what you want to achieve? That will dictate the changes in your diet (and will also help you stick with it), the changes in your routine (gain size? improve definition? improve functional power?), and the like. When formulating your short term goals, think of one of your long term goal. What are you really trying to achieve? Your short term goals should revolve around the long term goal. If you are trying to lose weight, you can definitely aim to increase your running pace and or distance. You can also create muscle-building short term goals as they can help burn your fat. By the way, given equal weights of muscle and fat, fat will have more volume as muscle would be more dense. I am trying to learn the new exercises because I think that those exercises focus on techniques and balance that can help my overall improvement and work on a lot of weaknesses. One of my "long term" goals right now is to improve my punch. All the exercises on my mini bucket list will improve the functional efficiency of my wrists (strength, endurance, stability). They will also improve the overall core strength, balance, and endurance as well. Just do not forget what you are trying to achieve! It doesn't mean that you can beat up Bruce Lee if you could bench 1000lbs. (We'll never know though ;)

*I believe in bone and skin training as well! Try sneaking in a couple of bare-fist days when you work the heavy bag out!

SUMMARY

+Having a goal will force you to achieve it = It will force you to introduce yourself to new workouts and or variations, and will also force you to add weight or repetitions to your current routine.

+This will translate into new strengths and mind/body adaptations that will help get you to your next level.

+Exercising is much more entertaining if you do it with a mission.

Clean N' Mean