The New Year is always an exciting time of new beginnings! Whether you are someone who sets New Year’s resolutions or not, January is a great time to re-visit or re-create your fitness goals and plan ahead. The MYZONE system provides you with great tools to monitor the progress toward and accomplishment of your goals!
The intention of setting fitness goals is to provide focused energy that helps you stick to a program and be more effective.
When goal setting, we encourage you to follow a three-step process:
Write it down. Putting your goals on paper solidifies your commitment.
Say it out loud (to some friends) or join a club in your area that has MYZONE and experience group tracking heart rate sessions. Sharing your goals increases your ownership of them, and it recruits folks to hold you accountable. You can establish a solid network of MyZone Connections that will provide a support team as you crush your goals.
Plan ahead. Mapping out the path will help you move toward accomplishing your goals. Weekly, monthly, and yearly goals will help you stay on track.
As you formulate your goals, we recommend that you are as specific as possible and that you use a balance of two different types of goals: outcome and process goals. Outcome goals focus on the desired final product that you would like to accomplish. Process goals are behavioral goals and focus on behavior change and habit formation. Mapping out process goals will provide a method for achieving your outcome goals. Here is what your goal setting adventure could look like:
Outcome goals focus on the end product. Here are two examples:
I will be able to run a 10k in June in under 56 minutes (just under 9 minutes per mile pace).
I will be able to do 25 consecutive pushups by March 30th.
Process goals identify a specific behavior during a workout session or a period of time. Here are two examples of process goals that support the outcome goal examples above:
I will run three days per week from now until June (you could go into even greater detail about the distance and the pace you will run each week).
I will perform two rounds of 10 pushups at least two days per week.
Notice that the examples above describe specific, measureable and realistic goals. Far too often, New Years Resolutions involve an all-or-none approach to goal setting, and they often focus on aesthetics (such as having a 6-pack by June), rather than behaviors. When these extreme outcome goals aren’t achieved quickly, we can become discouraged and give up altogether. Fitness is a lifelong endeavor, so we need to set goals that promote a long-term commitment.
This is why we recommend that you make outcome and process goals and focus more on making realistic changes in your daily routine. Over time, being consistent with your workouts will allow you to achieve your goals.
The MyZone system makes it easy to set outcome and process goals that will improve your adherence to an exercise program. Here are two examples of outcome goals using MyZone:
I will earn at least 1,200 MEPs each month for the year
I will burn 2,000-2,500 calories per week from exercise
And their corresponding process goals:
I will consistently earn at least 300 MEPs per week by working out 3-5 days per week
I will burn 400-500 calories per workout session for 4-5 sessions each week
Using measurements provided by MyZone (MEPs and calories) you're able to view your workout effort making it simple to track your progress. Share your goals and progress with us by using the hashtags #myzonemoves and #effortrewarded when you post to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter!
