No magic wand

So yesterday we started thinking about goals by figuring out what we want.  We have tuned into what makes us feel joyful.

That joy is the motivation to do the hard bits.  Which is what we’re going to talk about now.  Sadly, I do not have a magic wand.  This means that when we set goals they have to be more or less realistic while still bringing us toward what our little hearts desire.

 

What our hearts desire is our compass point, our big picture.  That’s the direction we’re going to go.  But we’re not orienteering to our goals:  we’re making a map. 

 

If, for example, what gives us joy is being able to travel, lugging our luggage, climbing up church towers or cliffs, eating all the local cuisine, and logging miles and miles of walking as we see the sights, our map to get there is going to need to include some strength training (to enable all that schlepping, to keep our bones strong, and to help our metabolisms process all those delicacies) and some cardio (so we don’t pass out when we end up in a hotel with no elevator and we have to take the stairs, or we want to scale the Mayan pyramids, or we want to do a Julie Andrews in an alpine meadow).

 

We want to figure out where we’re starting from (The couch?  Semi-weekly attendance at yoga class?  Trying Zumba once?).  Many gyms and personal trainers offer free fitness evaluations (yes, I do, too!) and that is a useful way to get some data, but it’s not necessary.  Once we have the starting point, we can begin to have an idea about the time it might take to get where we want to go.  We want to meet our goals safely, so we want to be consistent rather than overdo ourselves. A guideline for workouts is not to increase workout time by more than 10%, for example.  That means that this week’s 30 minutes is going to be next week’s 33 minutes and so on.  With weights, we increase our reps until we hit 10 to 12 with good form and then we increase the weight, dropping the reps down and continue alternating like that.

 

Personally, I like the kind of goals that go like this:  I’m going to do cardio five days a week for 30 minutes and I’m going to do one weight work out.  Then I’m going to see how I feel.  I will adjust each week until I am satisfied with my cardio endurance (it’s ok to attach a number to this, or some other measure, like not being out of breath at the top of the stairs) and I can tolerate two or three weight workouts per week.

 

Try it and see how it goes!