Goal setting: why bother?

With that most over-hyped of all holidays, new years, fast approaching I think there is a timeliness and relevance to this post. No doubt many of you will make some form of “new years resolution”, which you will keep up for a week or less and then end up returning to your pre-resolution habit as if the whole experience was just a drunken mistake (which it probably was). All joking aside however, setting a goal does not have to be restricted to one time of the year and it does not have to mean massive change but instead is an on-going process of small changes that ultimately lead to fulfilling a larger, long-term goal. As this is a health and fitness blog I think it is necessary to use training and training goals as the vehicle for this discussion.

Regardless of how you train, the importance of setting goals has been well established within the psychology literature (Bueno et al. 2008., Lutz et al. 2008., & Moreno et al. 2010). The benefits of goal setting have included increased motivation, success and adherence to name but a few. Not only does goal setting have a psychological effect but it also allows us to get the most from a training programme.

I have recently had to contemplate what I want to achieve from my training and this thought process enabled me to set some goals. Before this contemplation I was training as if I was a competitive athlete i.e. training for a couple of hours a day focusing on minute technicalities in lifting proficiency and pushing through grueling metabolic conditioning sessions. That would have been fine, if I was a competitive athlete or at least had some ambition of competing, but I didn’t. I was caught up in this idea that I had to be “elite” and yet I didn’t have a goal insight. The lack of a goal caused me to believe that I wasn’t achieving anything, which then resulted in me constantly switching programmes, which ultimately meant I didn’t achieve anything; it is a vicious cycle.

So I took a reality check and decided that I was going to take some ownership, “What do I want to achieve from my training?” I discovered an underlying desire to be strong, after all, strong is happy. I also wanted to put on some muscle mass and improve my body composition. Most importantly I wanted all these things for health reasons and aesthetics and NOT to increase a performance variable within a sport. Once I had these specific goals I could begin to read, research, pose questions to knowledgeable friends regarding training and nutrition and develop my own programme based on my needs.

Having set some broad goals such as becoming stronger and improving body composition, it is beneficial to break these outcome-related goals in to performance-related and/or process goals. For example, I want to get stronger (outcome goal) to do that I will need to increase my back squat and push press by 5 – 10 kg (performance goal). I can choose to focus on these lifts and programme the appropriate reps and sets in such a way as to elicit an increase in strength. These goals not only enable me to programme effectively (reps, sets, variations of lifts etc.) but also keep motivation levels up as I work towards achieving my goal.

Once goals have been achieved it is possible to re-evaluate the programme, make changes where they are needed and set new goals. This process can be done on your own or with a coach/PT and can add significant value to your training programme. Therefore, I think it can be said that setting goals effectively is an integral part of training, whether that is to be able to workout with friends at any given moment, walk up a mountain and enjoy the views, stand up out of a chair without assistance or to become a better sportsperson.

As we have highlighted in a previous post and alluded to in this one, training for health and training for performance are completely different in nature. So, before you start/go any further in your training it may be wise to take a step-back and reflect on what you are training for, or not as may be the case. This is a crucial stage in choosing/creating a training programme and will ultimately affect how you train and what you stand to gain or lose.

Reference List: 

Bueno et al. Emotional and motivational mechanisms mediating the influence of goal setting on endurance athletes’ performance. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2008: 9 (6); pp 786–799.

Lutz et al. The why and the how of goal pursuit: Self-determination, goal process cognition, and participation in physical exercise. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2008: 9 (5); pp 559–575.

Moreno et al. Motivation in the exercise setting: Integrating constructs from the approach–avoidance achievement goal framework and self-determination theory. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 2010: 11 (6); pp 542–550.

Training: Health vs Performance

In another post, Dan will be tackling the issue of goals and goal setting, as it is an important one.  Goals and goal setting go hand in hand about what I am tackling in this inaugural post.

I think it is important to recognize that there is a clear distinction between the actions we may choose to take in order to achieve or maintain some level of performance, and the actions we choose to take which will confer upon us the greatest level of health and longevity.  I think in most cases, the two do not necessarily go hand in hand.  Will training for some performance related endeavor optimize our health versus living sedentary lifestyles, sitting on the coach, eating bonbons, while watching re-runs of Oprah Winfrey and Sally Jesse Raphael?  Most definitely.  Will it confer on us a the most optimal level of health in regards to longevity?  I am not so sure.

A lot of different things led me to start thinking about this.  First off, I am approaching 40 (I am two years away) and for the past few years, until recent, I was training with the notion I was/wanted to be a competitive exerciser.  I was doing CrossFit, or a version of it that had a performance related goal rather religiously.  Okay, I realize my being a competitive exerciser was a pipe dream, but I was training that way, and focused on the competitive aspect.  With the birth of my son, and less than optimal sleeping conditions, along with normal daily stressors, I started wondering, and researching about what was optimal for my new current conditions.  It also led me to start thinking about taking an approach for a style of exercise that was conducive to longevity and sustainability.  So the wheels in my head started churning.  I read, I listened, I researched.  Along with my research I came upon a talk, along with some podcasts, by Dr. James O'Keefe, who looked at endurance athletes, and realized that more was not always better with these athletes, and their seemed to be a dose response curve, similar to drugs.  Give too little of a drug, it does not work.  Give too much, it's toxic, give an appropriate dose, and it works great!  He believes running is the same way.

So back to the question, health versus performance.  I love CrossFit and its metabolic conditioning.  I also love power lifting and Olympic weightlifting.  I see benefit in HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training).  But are these optimal for health? Longevity? Performance?  I think each can be but the issue is in the dosing.  Another issue to consider is age.  I think dosing is also age dependent.  As you get older, you may need to cut down the dose of one type of exercise, and increase the dosage of others.  There will always be exceptions to the rules, genetic freaks who live until a ripe old age, performing at the extremes.  There are exceptions to every norm.  I think it is unsafe to consider yourself an exception.

If you want to be a competitive power lifter, you need to lift heavy ass weights a lot.  When you exert yourself on a 1 RM back squat, the blood pressure for that exertion for that moment I am sure is exceedingly high.  Is this good to do over and over again, day in and day out?  Probably not.  Is it safer when you are in your 20's and there is more elasticity to your entire CV system.  I would think so.  As you age, the frequency of this type of extreme bout of stress  I think needs to be reduced.  Do you need to stop lifting weights?  Hell no.  Resistance training has so many more benefits, and strength rules over everything, however, the style of lifting and/or rep schemes needs to be modified.  Dan John says it best when he discusses that hypertrophy is the most important thing past age 35.  Should you be trying to lift heavy 5 days a week?  Depends what heavy is to you, and the demands it is placing on your body.  also depends upon the lift itself.  Lots of variables.

You want to be an Olympic Weightlifter.  Same thing.  Lots of heavy weights.  Oly lifting while fun, is unfortunately a higher risk endeavor.  There are a lot of places where things can go wrong and injury could result, especially in an untrained or immobile lifter.  Is this optimal for health and longevity?  Once again it is dose dependent related on age.  The younger we are the more we can sustain.  Is there risk at any age?  Yes.  As we age, it is necessary to maintain power/force development.  Maybe not full Olympic lifts as we age, but power and hang power varieties with a barbell or dumbbells are necessary  to maintain power in the hips.  There is an old saying, if you don't use it, you lose it.  This is true.  Maintaining hip mobility and force development, is important at any age, but still necessary as we age, just the style and type, may need to be modified.

HIIT training and CrossFit Metabolic conditioning are also things which I think are very dose dependent and age related.  Can a young person be able withstand the intensity of these workouts day in and day out compared with an older individual?  Yes.  I think as we age, we need to decrease the number of times in a given week where we have such a high level of relative intensity, basically we need to decrease the dose.  Remember we are talking about optimal health not optimal performance.

Through the course of the past few months, I have started to re-adjust how I train.  Trying to train more optimally for health and longevity overall, and intersperse into this baseline training periods where I will train for some performance related goal.  Basically, I am altering my dosage.  What does this look like?  More hypertrophy training.  More Mobility.  More Body Awareness.  No more full Olympic movements.  Sporadic Sprinting.  Sporadic MetCons.  More Rest.  More Walking.

Being male, changing my training from how I trained even 6 months ago, means swallowing some pride, as I may not be able to do things I used to do.  Changing my training means I probably should not be doing some lifts and/or rep schemes I used to do, or at the very least revise how they are done. It does not mean I should sit on the coach and eat bonbons though!  

Please leave questions in the comment section as I would love to try to answer them.  This is such a broad topic it is tough to touch on everything, at least in a concise manner.