Many of us will be thinking about our goals for this coming year (New Year’s Day recovery always does that!) and we wanted to give you a bit of a guide on how to do this effectively. We get to watch many goals chased, achieved and sometimes fallen-short of each year. Naturally, we want to know WHAT makes goals doable and WHY do some people seem to hit them consistently year after year?

We’ve broken this down into 2 sections: general rules and specific training rules. The general rules are ones that are over-arching principles that seem to affect the outcome and the consistency of process. The specific training rules are more to do with why the effort that you put in, will be successful in achieving your goal.

Step one, is to totally nail down your “generals” and then and only then, should you look at the “specifics” of your goals! Let’s do this!

General:

1. Inspiring. You will need for your goal to be genuinely inspiring – something that really gets to you in the pit of your stomach and makes your heart beat just a bit faster. The amount of discipline, will power and effort you’re going to deploy this year will be SO much more consistent if you get this right. Too many people do things to impress their friends or parents, to make their social media look good or to satisfy their coach. Do this for you!
2. Realistic. If you’re going to have a goal and achieve it, it must be realistic. There’s no denying this one. Yes, you can really stretch the boundaries and yes you can make it on the limit of what’s possible, but it does need to be realistic. Think hard about this one and make sure it fits your abilities.
3. Demanding. Goals appear to be more consistently followed, more rewarding and achieved more when clients make them demanding. What we mean by that, is that it needs to push you into a zone of discomfort. This can be physically, mentally or technically. Athletes respond well to this… although it’s a fine line on HOW hard you push it.
4. Fun. Yup! It must be fun to be in the process of the goal! For sure, not every day can be fun and silly, but the human mind (no matter how great an athlete you are) needs an up-lifting feeling to stay in the goal-process for a long time. Our most successful clients and professional athletes regularly have an element of fun in their goal chasing. Don’t ignore this factor!

Specific:

1. Sport specificity. What we mean by this, is that you MUST identify and then follow a regime that’s specific to the demands of your activity. Yes, you may love going on the campus board or doing hours of yoga, but when it comes to achieving goals, BIG parts of our athletes’ training cycles are highly specific to their goals. Start the year more non-specific and continually build the specificity towards your big day!
2. Volume & intensity. If you are aiming for a goal that is climbing El Cap, then you must dial in the intensity and volume of training to match in with your big wall aim. If each day involves 400m of climbing and at a crux grade of V7, then work this into your plan! Likewise, if you want to have 2 weeks of crushing all your dream boulders in the Rocklands you must deal with the loading in your training process – it’s going to be no good if you train for 2-3 max efforts a day when your dream is to tick of 6-8 hard classics every other day…
3. Super power. This one is a cool one! The essence of building your super power into your training is to identify WHAT exactly is it that’s holding you back from your goal right now. Is it finger strength, aerobic power, flexibility or something else? Once you’ve worked out what you MUST change and how much it will determine your success, then go after it like a possessed zombie! Remind yourself of the super power every day if possible. Keep your focus on that area as this one is going to be big!

Finally…. we wish you the very best in your processes and goals this year and do drop by our social media channels or Facebook community group if you ever have questions! We’re obsessed with identifying what matters, how to change it and supporting you in achieving it. Tomorrow we’re going to do a bit of a goal sharing amnesty, so get thinking! Hope those hangovers get better soon….