It's not about the goal, it's about how you want to feel.
How to set goals that actually matter to you.
Thinking about goals and what you want from your training seems simple but often isn’t. Why is this? Because goal setting is a skill.
At our gym, we meet with clients every few months to discuss and review their goals. I’ve learned a few key lessons from these conversations:
Goal-setting is a skill that needs to be practiced. It also helps to have a framework.
People assume they should know what these goals are, but are often unclear on what actually matters to them.
Most of the time, people are chasing a feeling over an achievement.
Here’s a quick story:
I recently tried to get back to my music practice. During my first lesson, the piano teacher asked me what my goals are. I knew the question would be asked but was still unprepared. I fumbled my way through a response that felt vague and convoluted, and we spent the next hour working on things I didn’t really care about. I started feeling excited and left feeling aimless and slightly disappointed.
I thought about this more when I got home and realized that ultimately what I’m looking for is a feeling rather than any particular technique or skill. I want to feel like I can express myself through music. But what does this have to do with your training?
Most people say things like, “I’d love to be able to do a pushup or pull-up.” But what happens once they reach this goal? Do they just aim for a more challenging variation? And then what? Yes, sometimes this is what people truly want, but usually there’s more to it.
Maybe they’ve always felt they had limited upper-body strength and saw themselves as “weak.” That’s about more than an exercise—it’s about becoming a certain kind of person. It’s about self-expression.
Break it down
The clients I’ve worked with often think these answers should come easily. “What do you want from training” sounds like a simple question with an easy answer. Usually people say things like: to get stronger, to get leaner, to feel more confident in my body.
While these are all answers to the question, we need to be able to break these things down further for them to hold up over time and in the face of obstacles.
First, we need to think about short-term and long-term goals. A long-term goal would be something like, “I want to dance at my grandchild’s wedding.” (This example is stolen from one of my favorite coaches, Dan John.) But the issue with only having a long-term goals is that they don’t offer any short-term benchmarks (or rewards) to keep you motivated. There also isn’t much time pressure. If your goal is for your 80-year-old self, waiting another couple of years to get started might not feel like a big deal.
This is where your short-term goals come into play. You want to have several short-term goals at different intervals. The easiest way to come up with these is to use a simple framework:
What do I want this week?
e.g. to train on Mondays and Thursdays
What do I want this month?
e.g. to miss no more than 2 training sessions
What do I want in the next 6-months/year? (This is where things usually get tricky.)
e.g. to keep my back pain manageable and be able to feel good when traveling, commuting, and spending time with my family
What do I want in the next 2 years?
e.g. to be able to squat comfortably, have the strength and mobility to learn new skills, and feel confident in my body’s ability to do what I want
What do I want in the next 5 years?
e.g to be consistent with my training and have it be a steady part of my life; to be able to jog, play pickup games of pickleball, and travel comfortably
In these examples, if you make it to your sessions this week, you’ve already set yourself up to achieve your monthly goal. Then if you achieve your monthly goal, you’re probably on track for your 6-month goal, and so on.
What about when we miss these benchmarks? Life will inevitably get in the way, and to make anything resilient, you need to be adaptable. If your goal was to miss no more than 2 sessions this month but you missed 4, you might need to rethink the goal. Was it too aspirational? If so, adjust it and move on. The key is to keep moving forward and not to get caught up in the “loss.”
Who do you want to become?
People often think of things like “do a pull-up” or “lift heavier weights” when considering training goals. I’ve found that this isn’t what most people really care about. More often than not, people are searching for a feeling. Our desire to achieve the goal is because of how we think it will make us feel.
Weight loss or gain goals are a perfect example of this. People believe that if they gain or lose X amount of weight, they’ll feel more confident, comfortable, capable, etc. While this may be true, it’s important to focus on the “why” of what you want over anything else. Doing so is what helps you focus on the process rather than the result, especially when progress is slower than you’d like.
It’s okay to be unclear.
If you aren’t sure what your goals are, that’s completely okay. Whatever you do, try to resist the urge to come up with an arbitrary goal that doesn’t really matter. You already know what you want. You walked through the door to get started for a reason. Start with this reason and then ask yourself a few more questions:
Why did I start training?
What are some things that don’t matter to me in this process?
What does it mean to be someone who trains and why does this matter to me?
Final thoughts and questions for you:
If you’re a coach, how do you discuss this with your clients? Do you have any exercises or questions that have worked to help them?
If you’re a client, how do you think about your own training goals? Is this something you’ve struggled with? If so, what do you get from training?
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Please feel free to share them via email at andrea@devilfishathletics.com.