What is your Health & Fitness Timeline?

In today’s world of social media comparison and instant gratification we all have the urge to want to accomplish our goals instantly. We often times see our friends getting their first pull-up, or getting a HUGE dead-lift PR, and we think to ourselves… “why am I not there yet? I put in the work, I am dedicating myself to the process, how did they get it first?”

This type of comparison can break us, and can also derail us from continuing the pursuit of our goals. It is at this point where you should stop and ask yourself, what is your fitness timeline?

Categories of Fitness Goal Timelines:

When it comes to a fitness goal timeline, there it two categories that everything can fall under. Health and Fitness and Competition goals. Our general health and fitness goals may look like getting a pull-up, running a mile without stopping, deadlifting a certain weight, making it to the gym 6 days in one week, losing x amount of weight, etc., These types of goals are for recreational purposes or life skill purposes only. Competition goals can look like competing in the CrossFit Open, or a body building competition. The difference between these two types of goals, besides the intention is the amount of time that it takes to “accomplish” each type of goal. This is their “timeline.”

General Health and Wellness Goals:

For most of us, our goals fall under general health and fitness goals. We set our own subjective timeline. We can create this timeline ourselves, or we can work with a coach to set this timeline, and we set a “date” for ourselves of when we would like to achieve that specific goal such as a pull up. Dates are a great way to motivate us, and hold us accountable. Dates must be established with the mentality that sometimes they are not realistic expectations. As we are fully aware, some skills can take a very long time to accomplish. Staying fluid with the “end date” but fixed on the day to day effort you’re making and the intention may be what is necessary to keep us motivated.

For example, lets say that your goal for the year was to do a pull-up. Ok, so you set the date, you wanted your pull up by 2022. So you work really hard all year long, and then by the end of the year you didn’t achieve your butterfly pull-ups. Meanwhile, your bestie got not only a strict pull up, but butterfly pull-ups and started working on her muscle ups. Initially we think “NOT FAIR!” But let’s take a step back. You worked really hard with your coach, you put in all the work, did all the drills, so why did you fall short on your goals? Let’s try our best to reframe this train of thought and instead of asking why, let’s ask what?

What did you gain from pursuing this goal?

Maybe from this goal, you have gained a lot of upper body strength, maybe now you have better body control than you have ever had, maybe your core strength is the best it has ever been,

Your fitness timeline here is subjective, it can always be extended because the day to day effort in the pursuit in your goal is still moving you forward. Mini milestones are just as important as the end goal because they give you something you can measure along the way.

Your body and abilities fare unique to you. When it comes to general health and wellness, this is a lifelong journey. One that is YOURS. If YOU put in the work, your body will be ready when it is ready and will continue to reap the benefits from the pursuit of your goal.

Lifelong impact: 

Whether your somebody who has competitive goals, or a somebody who has just committed themselves to a lifelong health and wellness journey it is so important to ask yourself, what are you training for? Why are you pursuing this journey?

Once we take the time to distinguish your motives, you can be fluid with your own fitness timeline. You will feel that you don’t need to compare your journey to others. You will enjoy your wins, and the benefits from the pursuit of the goal.