So, 2020 didn’t quite go to plan.  As Melbourne (and the world) come around to the end of a year of uncertainty and continuous change, this can be a really great opportunity to start taking some control back and making positive changes for the future. Whether you stopped exercising during lockdown or you’ve been out running every day, setting some goals might be a great way to centre yourself and work towards something you can control.

Making a change can be scary and overwhelming, often we find that people know what they want to do but have no clue on how to get there. This is where goal setting can help.

The benefits of using a more structured approach to goal setting include:

• Creates a plan of action for you
• Gives you clear benchmarks to tick off your progress
• Makes the overall goal less overwhelming and daunting
• Gives you some accountability thanks to timed checkpoints

At The Biomechanics, we want to make this process as simple as possible, so we’ve made a resource to use to set goals in an easy, measurable and concise way.

Step 1 – Find your ‘Why’:

First, start with your ‘Why’ - why is this goal important to you?

This can be especially powerful when you think deeper as to why you want to achieve this goal. For example, if your goal is to be able to do 10 push ups to ‘be stronger’ - why do you want to be stronger? Is it to help you playing with and lifting your children? Or to have more resilience with heavy lifting tasks at work?

Step 2 – Set a long-term goal:

Ask yourself ‘in one year (or six months) from now, what would I like to achieve’. This is your long-term goal and what we’re going to be working towards. Once we have that, follow the guide on the sheet to see how you can break up this long-term goal. Get specific with this, in fact, the more specific the better. For example, instead of ‘be stronger in arms’, or ‘do more push ups’, set an amount of push ups you want to be able to do and by what specific date you want to achieve this by.

Step 3 – Set medium and short-term goals:

The more specific your long-term goal is, the easier this can be. Whether it’s an amount of push ups, a running distance, or a walking time, lesson it to an amount you could achieve in a month’s time and halfway between now and your long-term goal.

Step 4 – Process goals:

Process goals are little things you can do outside the specific task to help. For example, if your goal is to run 5km without stopping, a process goal might be to do a certain amount of squats a day to build leg strength up to assist your running. These aren’t meant to be particularly challenging, but rather something small that could be done each week to assist your progress.

We hope this tool can help you gain more clarity when working towards achieving specific goals. If you struggle setting and achieving goals, you are not alone. If you have fitness or lifestyle goals that you struggle with due to motivation, pain or needing some assistance, we’d love to help.

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