I know that there’s a possibility that you’ve been receiving a lot of messages coming at you to completely change you who are in the New Year. The first thing I want to let you know is you are perfect, you aren’t broken, you don’t need to be fixed this coming New Year, and you don’t need to be a completely new you. I also get really excited about the New Year particularly about setting goals. I think it’s a great time to get some momentum to start moving towards something that you want to do.
So, I wanted to share in this blog about how to set your movement and exercise goals for next year. I used to feel a lot of pressure this time of year to really be setting these giant goals for exercise like exercising every day. However, that wasn’t realistic and because I know more about the need for rest, too, I incorporate it in my goal setting.
To help you set your movement goals for 2022, let me share with you my goal setting process so you can set achievable goals for yourself for the New Year.
Ask Yourself: Why Is This Goal Important, Is This Goal For Me?
Have you been looking online a lot or have you been getting comments from friends and family that you need to look or move a certain way and you are taking those on as your own and setting goals that way? If those goals are for somebody else, it’s very unlikely that you’ll stick to them. For example and nutrition, you want to make sure that you’re doing it for yourself and knowing why you’re doing it for yourself.
I also find that if your goal is purely aesthetic or to look better in your body, I find that people fall off that wagon really quickly. This is because changes in your body take a longer period than a year especially if you’re going about it small and consistent. So it’s best to understand why you want to achieve this goal outside of what you want to look like. Remember that it’s not a bad thing to change the way you look, but it’s better to have it as a secondary reason and not your primary one in setting these movement and exercise goals.
Ask Yourself: What Time Do I Actually Have That I Can Commit To This Movement?
In the New Year, you won’t all of a sudden have three or four hours to commit to movement that you didn’t have before. You want to be clear on how much time do you actually have and what you can commit to.
Set Goals For 90 Days
Another thing that has really helped me is setting goals for 90 days and not goals that will take the whole year to achieve. That way, you can actually see yourself getting there. A year is a really long time and the brain takes a long time to wrap around this idea. That is why 90 days is the way to set your goals.
For example, you can set your movement goals on January 1st and have it end by March 31st. This way, you can slowly build upon that movement and exercise habit you want to have.
Have Someone To Be Accountable To Your Exercise Goals
Having someone or a group to be accountable to your exercise goals will help you achieve them because you talked about your goals out loud or shared them. You will be more likely to work towards those movement and exercise goals.
If you’re not so much an external person who needs external feedback from other people, you can create a tracker for yourself. For example, if you want to exercise three times in a week, you can tick off your tracker once you’ve reached this goal weekly. You can also put it somewhere prominent so you can see it. It will be helpful in moving you towards your goal.
Determine If You Can Handle Stretch Goals Or Smaller Goals
Let me give you a personal example regarding this last tip. A stretch goal for me is to walk every day for 30 minutes for the first quarter of the year. This is something I could definitely achieve in this New Year based on what my schedule is looking like and the other movement practices that I do. So, I am making it more achievable for myself by walking for 20 minutes, thrice a week. That way, my goal at the end of the year is to walk five times a week for 30 minutes. What I did there is to slowly ramp up to what I want to get to by the end of the year. This makes more sense to me and I am confident I will be able to achieve it. If you are somebody not motivated by something smaller and you need that stretch goal, then go for it. just know yourself and that’s going to make goal-setting a little bit easier.
A couple of things that went into this and why this is important to me is walking outside helps me to clear my head. So, I want to use this as a practice during my work week to help me clear my head when I’m getting a little bit stuck on some work that I’m trying to get done. Another reason why this goal is important for me is because my other movement practices like tennis, weightlifting, and yoga make me sore afterwards so doing that walk will help decrease the soreness so I feel better when I am moving.
Conclusion
You can see that this goal is really specific to me and is not another goal that somebody set for me. When I really looked at my time, I knew that my schedule was pretty packed so getting 20 minutes in was completely reasonable because I generally take an hour for lunch, so I eat in the first 40 minutes and then go for a walk in the remaining 20 minutes. Getting really specific about my time and when I’m actually going to do this goal can help me focus on that.
Again, my goal is in the 90-day time I discussed earlier. As for staying accountable, I made a tracker and I posted it on Instagram if you want to check it out. (Get link for this) Lastly, I want to have small, achievable goals because I’m more likely to make progress towards that. I am a recovering perfectionist so if I am trying to set a goal that’s too big and I don’t achieve it, I am likely to fall off the map and not do it. So, setting it smaller is a good thing because if I go above and beyond it, that’s great, and if I don’t that’s still great because I achieved what I wanted to do for that week.
I hope this was helpful in setting your movement goals for 2022. Further, learning more about yourself will be really helpful in setting your exercise goals. Happy New Year!