Keep your fitness game strong all year

By Leo Nanetti, Personal Trainer, Weight Loss Coach Movement HQ

We’re well and truly into 2022. Remember those New Years or post-Covid goals you set for yourself? When you convinced yourself you were going to achieve that fitness goal you always said you would?

If you’ve started that and are going strong, well done, keep going! Read on so you keep going strong.

If you haven’t quite got into a good routine yet, no worries, it’s time, no more excuses!

With seemingly unlimited excuses, and life and work getting in the way, it’s easy to justify putting your fitness goals on the back burner in favour of more immediate, more “important” goals.

After close to 10 years in the fitness industry, helping countless people achieve their fitness goals through personal training, group training and online coaching, I’ve noticed what really gets people motivated to start training and stick to it:

Effective and applicable goal setting and planning.

I’ve never seen a person more motivated to make a change than after a goal setting session.

But here’s the real crux of the motivation problem, we all know what we want, most of us know why we want what we want.

But we often fall short because we don’t know how to get there. This goes for all areas of life, not just fitness.

So if you know what you want and why you want it, why is the “how” our limiting factor?

Let’s take weight loss as a simple example seeing as I’m in the process of losing weight myself.

Firstly, many of us understand the basics of “how” weight loss works – eat less move more – but what about when we do all the things we believe to be correct but don’t see the results we expect?

Well most people throw in the towel, not for lack of discipline or determination but simply for a lack in knowledge of how to do it. I believe the famous quote is “imagine what you could achieve if you knew you wouldn’t fail”.

I would prefer, “Imagine what you could achieve if you knew exactly how to do it”.

So let’s get practical on goal setting with a focus on how to handle the unforeseeable.

Step 1 – Write down what you want to achieve

Make it as specific as possible:

“I will lose 10kg in the first 4 months of this year”

“I will complete a 1 min handstand by my birthday in July”

Step 2 – List what you need to do

Include everything you can think of.

For handstands, how many handstand classes do you believe it will take? Would doing a mobility class help? Maybe a strength class too?

Step 3 – Diarise it 

Take all the things you list and make a weekly schedule. Block out the time to do those things.

Step 4 – Plan for blockages

Consider all the potential interruptions you may have for this goal and for each write a practical solution.

Can’t make it to one of your regular handstand classes? Is there another one you can get to as a backup?

Can you budget an emergency fund for a private class?

Step 5 – Get advice and information

Now this is super important and ties back to my previous point about lack of knowledge.

Write down as many resources you can turn to for advice/ information if you get stuck on your way to your goal.

Step 6 – Be accountable to someone 

Optional but recommended. Find yourself an accountability partner, preferably someone who has a similar goal to you. This is an optional step but I have personally found it to be the best.

Now, none of the above will work unless you remind yourself. Set a reminder in your phone or computer to re read your goals and plans on a daily basis. Honestly it’s 5min and I guarantee it’s more motivational then anything you can watch on YouTube as it is YOUR goal and no one else’s.

I believe anyone can achieve any goal they set their mind to. Our only true opposition is the limiting beliefs we impose on ourselves.

Time to get to work.

For more tailored guidance and specific advice we are here to help.

Reach out to us here

Leo Nannetti has been working in fitness and sport recreation since 2008. He is passionate about movement and exercise instruction. Early in his career he focused on weight loss and general exercise coaching. As he continued his own training he noticed the need for a more systematic approach to exercise prescription. He began studying corrective movement, kettlebells and barbell training in more depth through the Functional Movement System Institute and Strong First. This fostered a keen interest in exercise quality over quantity which became the nucleus of his approach to training.

He participates in a variety of sports, mostly Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, golf, snowboarding and rock climbing. His training consists primarily of kettlebell training, basic barbell training and body weight calisthenics.