If you want to make progress and be continuously motivated, setting realistic goals is one of the best motivators.

Many trainees are highly motivated when they begin with a fitness program, but often give up after just a short while. In the long run the absence of clear goals hampers the development of your body.

Long-term goal.
This really consists of the image of your body held on to in your mind over a longer period of time.

Visualize your entire body - your arms, legs, chest, shoulders and back - and try to form an image of how you want your body to look. Picture yourself in excellent condition walking along the beach or - if you are a woman - at a party in a sexy evening gown.

The point is to visualize yourself as you want yourself to look ideally. Hold on to this image, because it is your long-term training goal.

Short-term goals.
These consist of the realistic and measurable intermediate goals you have to set yourself. Here we are concerned with concrete and measurable goals such as: within the next 3 months I want to lose 10 kg of fat, or within the next 8 weeks I want to gain 2 kg in muscle mass.

It is important not to set unrealistic goals. Please note also that the experience of others does not always apply to your own particular situation. Your own training experience and starting point will ultimately determine how realistic your goals are.

abdominals, cable crunches

After having trained for a longer period of time, experience will have taught you how to set more realistic goals. Eventually you will reach the point where you are able to more or less control the development of your body.

From that moment on you can begin to introduce different phases in your workout schedules. For example, effecting seasonal weight gain (muscle mass build-up) in autumn and winter and weight loss (loss of fat without loss of muscle mass) in spring for the summer.

If you set realistic goals and stick to your workout schedules, you will surpass your own expectations and goals.

abdominals, cable twist crunches

It is important to take your training seriously and to organize your workouts carefully with the aid of the Workout manager on this website.

Keeping your exercise log-book up to date. Write down your goals. Think of the parts of your body you particularly want to change and describe the desired change clearly.

In other words, don't just write: I want bigger arms. Describe it as follows: within 2 months I want to achieve a 1 cm size-increase of my upper arms.

abdominals, floor chrunches

Each week write down on your printout how many centimeters you have actually added to your arms following the previous week's arm exercises. This is the only way in which you can measure what you are doing.

abdominals, decline sit ups

Measuring is knowing … Remember that many small steps in the end add up to one big step.

Author: Tobias van der Avort

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