If you’re a regular reader, you know we’ve given you outlines in our blogs of great goal setting methods.

But the truth is, the best goal setting method on planet earth won’t work alone.

Goal setting methods will not work unless you know exactly why you’re going to achieve the goals. What I mean is, unless you’re going to attach a goal like fat loss to what is most important to you, you will not stick to it (if fat loss was that important to you, you would’ve reached your goal already). You will most likely also generate a negative connotation to ‘fat loss’ especially because it will be deemed as something negative about your self image, which then creates a negative outlook to the gym. Believe me, I’ve seen it thousands of times in the gym environment.

The solution is to find out what really matters to you and connect your health and fitness goals to whatever that is. For instance, if you love being there for your kids and want to always have the energy to play and look after them, the gym is then a tool to help this happen. If you want to be happier than you were in 2016 and know that your back pain and low energy levels prevent this, bingo! You can then use lifestyle, nutrition and exercise protocols to bring you back into balance. If you’re an athlete where you want better times, lifts and results in your chosen sport, you know why you’re putting in all that hard work.

So I’ll give you one of my examples… Those that know me, know I like adventurous things and one of my goals is to be able to keep athletic enough to do all of them at any time of year. I know what it takes and know how to get there. My driving force is that I love the end result; I can put myself in almost any situation and experience things I’ll never forget. Check the video:

And you have to love the end result. Otherwise you’re just not going to follow through. Depending on what you want to achieve, going through the process of change with the time dedicated, all the effort, the pain and the pressure… is damn hard work. Hard. If you make your focus on how health and fitness will improve your life in the areas that matter most to you, all of a sudden, you won’t see it as hard work anymore, it will become a passion that sits alongside your highest priorities.

A fast track method to stick with it in 2017:

• Identify your most important area of life you want to improve (think sport performance, feeling better, sex life, happier, better relationships, hiking, career etc)
• List how improving your health and fitness will improve this
• Write these down
• Now follow your chosen goal setting method

Now I know this is an ultra simple way of showing you how it’s done and we go into great depth with full proof methods in our coaching but you get the idea for now.

My message to you this new year is to use health and fitness to enhance your life experience, after all, that is one of the most powerful things all of us can hope to do. The last thing I want to see this January are people rushing in for a new start to once again, taper off by the end of February back to their old habits just because they’ve lost track of why they turned up in the first place.

Enjoy the journey

Rupert Hambly