Free Muscle Building & Health

Setting goals for your weight training is essential if you want to be motivated and disciplined. This is something that will help you to make sure that doing your workouts become a habit and something that becomes part of your normal behavior. Without goals you will not be able to be as willing to continue with the program if you don't have something to work for and to look forward to.

When getting started you should first figure out which of the different fitness activities that are of any real interest to you. If you don't like something that you are doing it's going to be hard to keep the goals that you may have in mind for yourself. You can do this by looking at fitness magazines, going to sites online and even visiting your local gym.

Once you have done your research you can sit down and make a more specific list of what your overall goals are going to be with the training routine that you might be thinking of doing. Your training program can focus on losing weight, your endurance, weight training or a combination of any of those things. Your long term goals should be reached by progressing through your training. You can set something like losing 40 pounds or your goal could be running for an hour or bench pressing 200 pounds. To get there you need a program that will get you there one step at a time and not all at once.

You also should make a list of short term goals as well. These can be goals that you set up on a daily, weekly or even on a monthly basis. A daily goal could be to add 10 more minutes to your running. You weekly goal might be to lose 2 pounds or to increase your endurance doing something from 10 minutes to 15 minutes.

You should write a contract for yourself that stipulates what your long term goal is and what you need to do to achieve that goal and you need to sign it and commit to yourself that you will stick to it. You should post this contract with yourself in a place in your home where you see it on a daily basis. This could be where you workout or on your refrigerator.

You should set up a timetable of when you want to try and achieve your different goals and put down certain dates at which you would like to achieve your goal or goals. You need to be realistic however, don't expect more than your body really can achieve. You will only set yourself up for failure by doing that.

Each time you reach a goal you need to give yourself a reward. If this means that you take off 10 minutes early from a workout one day, do so. However, don't be afraid to reward yourself even more by maybe treating yourself to a night out or whatever it is that really makes you happy or is fun.