What goals do you have?

It's not uncommon during an initial client conversation for someone to answer this question with a variation of the following...

"I want to workout 3 times a week"

or

"I want to lose this" **Points to random part of the body**

or

"To get healthy"

All good goals in their own right.

Rather than talk about how to set goals...you can read about that by clicking here. I wanted to provide some tangible, specific, health and fitness goals that you can take away.

That is, if you find your goals to be something like the examples above...

"Healthy" Baseline Goals: These goals don't necessarily require 'structured' workouts, but will go a long way in improving overall health.

• Average 7,000 steps per day OR achieve 7,000 steps per day for as many days in a row as possible.

• Sleep an average of 7 hours a night, or create an environment that allows you to sleep 7 hours each night.

• Keep your caffeine intake to 100mg per day.

• Achieve a resting heart rate (heart rate upon waking in the morning) of less than 57 beats per minute.

"Physical" Fitness Goals: These goals are great entry points to strength training and can be great building blocks to the healthy baseline goals.

• Farmer Carry 25% or your bodyweight in each hand for 3 minutes AND 300 yards (so you can't sprint with it!)

• 10 consecutive push ups - flat or incline- with a 3 second hold at the top in between each rep.

• ​Dumbbell Incline row 25% of your bodyweight for 20 reps with a 2 second pause at the top.

• ​Goblet Squat 50% of your bodyweight for 20 unbroken reps with a 2 second pause at the top of each rep.

"Cardio" Fitness Goals: These are great baseline numbers/standards that build off of the heathy baseline goals, but also can be trained alongside the physical fitness goals.

• Walk a mile at a sub 12-minute mile pace.

• Perform a Modified coopers test - run/walk as far as you can in 12-minutes, aim to achieve 1.5 miles.

• Building off the modified coopers test- measure your heart rate after immediately completing...measure how long it takes for your heart rate to drop below 100 beats per minute. This is known as 'heart rate recovery'. Rather than focus on what is 'good', it's a subjective test in this format, it will serve as a baseline for measurable improvement.

These 11 items are really just the tip of the iceberg. What I hope you can take away from this article today is that if you ever find yourself wanting to achieve more, but don't really know where to start, this list will get you going on a track towards better health, which will be a result of your improved fitness capabilities. And that's pretty neat...