Happy new year to all of you fellow barbell enthusiasts. I am currently in El Paso, TX on the 2nd leg of a Holiday road trip seeing family all across the Lone Star State. In El Paso is one of my favorite Crossfit Gyms. Crossfit 915 (east). Excellent weightlifting equipment. Great people. If you are ever in the area I hope you check them out.
So with the new year come time to look over your goals you set last year and see if you completed any of them. Take a second to celebrate any victory you had. After you celebrate take an honest look at your shortcomings and ask yourself why you fell short of that goal. Most of the time a goal fails because it is too vague and can't force you to be accountable. Too often I hear "I want to be fit" or " I want to be healthier" or "I want to improve my lifts." Well, what does healthy or fit mean to you? What does improve your lift mean? There is no definitive end to these goals therefore you can't look back and say " yes I accomplished this". With these vague goals you are basing your success or failure on how you feel. Well if you evaluate a goal on a day you are feeling great, you might have a false sense of success. Or just the opposite can happen, despite a year of crushing workouts, and relationships, and jobs, if you evaluate on a particularly crappy day, you might think of yourself as a failure.
So the point of all this. Make sure a goal is measurable. Then make sure your goal has a time limit. Then get out there and do it.
Today it is easy to say you are gonna accomplish your goal, but tomorrow and the next day are when you have to get under the barbell and make it happen. Pr's don't come from wanting it. Pr's come from slogging away, doing one more set of squats, one more snatch despite torn hands. Pr's come when you get to the gym at 5:30 in the morning so you can go work 40 hours afterward and tuck your kids in at night. It is going to bed at 9 pm instead of staying up and watching the new tv show that everyone is talking about. Most of you will say that you want to snatch and clean more weight, but few of you will make it happen.
So now that you are all motivated and have the Rocky them blasting in your head, go eat some black eyed peas or menudo or whatever else you might eat for good luck in the year, and find a place to put your goals that you wrote down. Some place you can look at every once in a while to make sure that you are on track.
Happy New Year.
JT
