Fit

Reach Your Summer Fitness Goals

Goal setting is not just for January. Summer is a great time to revisit goals you may have made earlier this year or set new ones for yourself!  Here are four tips to help guide you to success this summer in health and fitness!

1. Set realistic fitness goals and find tools that will help track your progress: 

When setting your fitness goals, set both short term (1-2 months), and long term (2+ months) goals. Make sure these goals are challenging, yet obtainable with some hard work. I’ve listed a few different ways (outside of standing on a scale) to measure your progress so pick out what goals aligns most closely with yours.

  • Tone/Reduce Body Fat: Use a handheld body fat monitor to measure your body composition. I recommend everyone getting their BF% measurement, but especially if you are incorporating strength training into your workout routine as your weight may be misleading as you build more muscle.
  • Increase Athletic Performance: Depending on your specific sport or event you are training for there are different ways to measure your “athleticism”, but here are some of the most commonly used tests:  Vertical jump, shuttle run, broad jump, 10 and 40 yard dash.
  • Increase Strength: A one rep max of an exercise (Ex. bench press, squat, etc.) is very common, but if you are new to training I would recommend doing at least 5 reps of an exercise and using a conversion chart to calculate your true one rep max. This will help to reduce your risk of injury as a one rep max can be too much load for someone just beginning strength training.
  • Quality of Movement:  The functional movement screening is designed to measure someone’s “quality” of movement. It’s composed of 7 functional movements where the person gets scored on how well they performed each movement. It’s great for people that simply want to feel and move better!

2. Develop a workout plan and commit to it: 

Regardless of what your fitness goals are it’s critical to have a plan! It’s important to have variety in your workouts but you will be much more successful if you know exactly what you are doing each day as you walk into the club!  Below is an example of what I would consider a structured workout plan that includes a variety of training methods:

Day 1: Metabolic or HIIT training (Zone, TFW Hurricane, sprints, etc.)

Day 2: Strength training (lift or attend a class that includes a strength component)

Day 3: Recovery (be active but limit the amount of impact -stretch, attend yoga, walk, etc.)

Day 4: Cardio Day/Cross Training  (run, swim, play tennis, basketball, etc.)

Day 5: Metabolic or HIIT training

Day 6: Strength Training

Day 7: Off Day (Relax!)

3. Workout in Groups:

Whether you take group exercise classes or find a workout partner it provides a sense of community, support, and accountability. You will see better results not to mention it’s just simply more fun to be with others working towards similar goals!

4. Reward yourself for reaching your goals: 

Remember to make time to celebrate your victories along the way. Remember the different assessments I mentioned at the start? Make sure you are re measuring every couple of months and enjoying the process of reaching your long-term goal!

Don’t let yourself become frustrated, leading to throwing your hands in the air and goals in the trash. If you stay determined and disciplined with these four tips, your summer goals with become summer accomplishments!

Labeled In:

Find Your location and Schedule Your Tour Today!