Establishing, Reaching and Maintaining your Goals

Anyone that has successfully reached any type of goal knows to make a realistic plan is key.  For example: if you have never exercised a day in your life and your goal is to be active 5 times a week, start slow. Maybe go with twice a week for a few weeks then slowly increase it to 5 times. Any goal is attainable, you just need to make a realistic plan to reach it.

Today I train 6 days a week and take one true rest day. My goal is to sustain this while learning more complicated skills and increasing the intensity of my training sessions.  One can not wake up one day and start this, you need to work hard to get to this point in your workout journey.

What did this journey look like for me?

Four years ago it started with walking once a week; then twice; then 3 times; then suddenly I was walking every second day. I maintained that for 2 years.  Probably about a year in I added Yoga to the mix. Once walking and yoga stopped being challenging that is when I started searching for something else and tried pole dancing. Walking is still part of my life it has now morphed to walking everywhere. It no longer feels like exercise, it’s just how I travel now.

So how did I go from walking and yoga to my current training regimen.

• Month 1: walking every 2nd day; yoga 1 1/2 hours once a week; pole 1 hour once a week
• Month 2: walking every 2nd day; yoga 1 1/2 hours once a week; pole 1 hour twice a week
• Month 3: walking or cycling everywhere (within reason); yoga 1 1/2 hour twice a week; pole 1 hour twice a week
• Month 4 to 6: walking or cycling everywhere (within reason); yoga 1 1/2 hour twice a week; pole 1 hour 3 times a week
• Month 6 to 12: walking or cycling everywhere (within reason); yoga 1 hour once a week; pole 3 times a week slowly increasing the time spent in class from 1 hour per session to 2 hours per session. Added stretching and condition to mix.
• Month 12 to 18: walking or cycling everywhere (within reason); yoga 1 hour once a week; cardio 3 times a week 20 mins; pole 3 -4 times a week slowly increasing the time spent in class from 2 hour per session to 3 hours per session. Stretching and condition every week.
• Month 18 to Today: walking or cycling everywhere (within reason); Yoga 1-2 hours a week; Cardio 20 mins every second day; Chair dancing 1 hour once a week; Aerial Silks 1 1/2 hours once a week; Pole dancing 4 times a week 2-3 hours; physiotherapy 6 days a week; target strength conditioning once a week 10 mins.

Now I’m working on maintaining this training regiment while increasing my “target strength conditioning” to 3 times a week. I will be there in a few months. One day I would also like to increase my silks training to twice a week. To help me reach and maintain my goals I make a Monthly Schedule and do my best to stick to it. If you want use my template for creating your own “Training Monthly Schedule“, just click on the link and print the PDF then fill it out.

If I can achieve this anyone can. Four years ago I could barely walk 15 mins without having to sit down and rest; I weighed in at over 200 lbs and could not run more than 10 seconds without being out of breath.

-off to do my cardio