Introducing the Milestone Goal
In the last post, I wrote about the Workouts Goal, which is a goal that’s all about motivating you to stay active in whatever it is you choose to do. Today, I’m writing about the Milestone Goal, which is about pushing yourself to achieve measurable improvements in the specific exercises you’re performing.
Your Own Roadmap
A milestone in FitLogg, like in real life, is an action that marks an important stage of your mission for overall fitness. It’s a checkpoint, a little victory, and a time to party! In FitLogg, reaching a milestone means that you’re getting fitter. Different people enjoy different exercises, so our ideas of what “getting fitter” means will vary.
But a sure way to get nowhere is to perform at exactly the same level every time we exercise. Arnold didn’t get big by lifting the same 25 pound dumbbells day after day! Our bodies are adaptable things, and they need to be challenged. When an activity starts to feel easy, it’s a sure thing that our bodies have adapted and are no longer going to respond. The fat won’t melt off as easily, and the muscles will stop getting bigger and stronger. Creating milestone goals is a great way to keep your sights on the road ahead, to motivate yourself to keep pushing and getting results.
Read on for instructions and ideas for milestone goals.
Creating Your Roadmap
Setting up some milestones for yourself is easy. On the Goals page, click “New Goal ยป”. On the new goal page, you’ll see two types of milestone goals: Strength Milestone and Cardio Milestone.
Each of these forms works just like the forms you use when you’re logging a workout. You simply enter the name of the exercise for which you want to set a milestone, and then fill in the fields you want to improve on. You don’t have to use all the fields. Just fill in the ones you care to focus on. Let’s look at some examples.
Cardio Examples
Cardio exercises, like running and swimming, have many variables that you can strive to improve. You can set a goal to perform the exercise for a certain duration, over a certain distance, at a certain difficulty, to burn a certain number of calories, or any combination of them. Note that all of the values you set need to be surpassed for the goal to be achieved.
Here’s an example of a goal to run for at least thirty minutes and at least 2.5 miles:
Note that this isn’t a goal to run 2.5 miles in 30 minutes or less!
Other example goals:
“Run burning at least 300 calories”: a calorie-only goal is good if you don’t care how long it takes or how far you have to go to accomplish it.
“Jump-rope for at least 2 minutes, and at a difficulty of at least 15″: If you use the difficulty field to record how fast you spin that jump-rope, then this would be a great goal to push yourself to go really fast for two minutes. See how much space people will give you in the gym, you jump-rope fiend!
Strength Examples
I think it’s safe to assume that anyone who lifts weights wants to lift heavier than they do today. Who doesn’t like slapping an extra weight plate on a barbell and lifting the heaviest weight of their gym-going life! The strength milestone goal is about that, but also a little more.
Strength milestones are also composed of sets and reps. If you only fill in the weight field, then it is assumed that your goal is to lift a certain weight in a certain exercise only once. This will make sense in some situations, but most of the time it’s best to set a goal to lift a certain weight a certain number of times. The following are some examples.
This example goal reads “Barbell Bench Press with 135 lbs or more for 3 sets of at least 10 reps each.” It means that each set must have at least 10 repetitions each. You won’t get extra credit for doing 11 reps in one set, but only 9 reps in another. The milestone is not reached until the conditions are met exactly. So, setting a strength milestone with more than one set will force you to have some endurance with that heavier weight.
Here are some other examples:
“Deadlift with 225 lbs or more for 1 set of at least 1 rep”: Deadlift 225 lbs only once, with perfect deadlift form. This is a good goal if you are trying to reach a new one rep max.
“Squats with 135 lbs or more for 2 sets of at least 25 reps each”: This goal is all about endurance. If you want to improve your ability to handle major burning in your legs, this goal is for you.
“Push-Ups with body weight for 1 set of at least 50 reps”: This is a goal to do 50 push-ups. Note that the weight field is left blank when you create this goal.
“Ab Crunches with body weight for 1 set of at least 100 reps”: Do 100 crunches without rest. Just like the previous example, the weight field is left blank.
Set Your Milestones!
So those are the basics of the Milestone Goal. Have a look at your workouts and decide which exercises you should define milestones for. Give it a try and find out how motivating it is! Let me know what kind of milestone goals you’ve created by leaving a comment.
