http://thoffonline.com

So we are here and into a new year!  Hopefully everyone is using the momentum built of from the new year crossing and putting things into action.  New years always bring resolutions, goals that people hope to accomplish.  I’ve read that 80 percent of new years resolutions will fail.  Why is that?  Lack of motivation? To hard to accomplish? Or some other reason.. I’ve talked about a lot of my past successes being attributed to setting goals and taking baby steps toward those goals, you can find that blog here http://thoffonline.com/%20/blogs/baby-steps-2-success.  Today I want to talk about “the plan” that gets you to your mark.  I believe that most people are coming up short in their goals/resolutions because they are failing to create a plan of action.

For myself I am a very structured! I thrive on self-discipline, schedules, and hitting the marks I set for myself.  I won’t lie though… I’m not very punctual haha, anyone that knows me will tell you i’m not on time very often.  I’ve been focusing on being better at that lately but it’s definitely not easy.  Greg Romero has either had video’s or writing on the internet that discussed how people are more effective in their training when they can login to his site and see what they have to do for the day.  Not everyone is able to just wake up and know exactly what to do, neither am I &  this is why I create plans.

Plans create accountability, they create walls of direction that you must take to meet the destination you choose.  Humans are creatures of habit and that means if you decided this year that you want to go from a person who makes main events every now and again to someone who is a podium contender, you are going to have to make some drastic changes in your daily routine.  Off the top it’s going to take a solid sprint program, gym routine, and consistent racing and track sessions.  If you are not doing that already, I can assure you it won’t be easy to just wake up and say to yourself, “Ok, i’m going to get sprints in today”, then they next day say, “Ok, i’m going to hit the gym today.”  What kind of sprints are you going to do?  What kind of lifting are you going to do in the gym?  More often or not you will find yourself defeated and feeling like getting to your goal is not going to happen. This is most likely because you are walking into things blindly not knowing the PURPOSE that each thing does to help you reach your goal.

I want to share with you some things that I do to help keep me on track with achieving my goals.  Hopefully something in this blog inspires you, something gets to you and you say, “hey I’m going to try that” or spin off of something I do and create your own way of doing something similar!  The first thing I do is write down my biggest goals daily (sometimes I miss days) into a book i’ve labeled my desires book. The reason I do this is to keep myself focused on the long term and what I want for my life in the future. When I write these goals down I do NOT write them down as something I hope for. I write them down because I AM going to reach that destination. This is not like throwing a coin into a wishing well or every time you see a shooting star you make a wish. This is real and you WILL do it. To reach a goal you must be devoted to it, that means every breath or almost every breath haha needs to be tailored to this goal & obviously depending on how serious your goal is, the amount of time and focus you devote to it would change.  They say goals don’t become serious until you write them down, so for myself… I write them down daily.

Once you have clarified what it is that you want, you need to clarify how it is that you are going to get there. This can be the tricky part, are you able to accomplish your goal by yourself or do you need an expert to help you with guidance?  For example one of my goals that I write down is to successfully launch my non-profit business the “Freewheel Project.” There is some things I can do and there are a lot of things that I can’t do alone.  I need help and guidance most recently with my business plan.  In my mind I know it, but putting it down on paper properly for grant opportunities and soliciting businesses and people for support is different. I need someone trained in this area to help me get it done so I plan to hire out that job.  Another one of my goals I write down is to overcome my injury and return to racing BMX.  This goal doesn’t require an expert to help me along but a requirement for this to happen is stay focused on my physical therapy and preparing myself before I get back into the racing arena.

I will use my racing as an illustration for my goal setting and progress now for a deeper understanding.  Every year I plan my race season and I set & write down goals for them.  Most of my goals are training oriented & I believe that you should set obtainable goals somewhere along the way to your major goals.  These smaller goals are like lil nuggets of motivation that you are on the correct path to reaching your goal.  Below is a worksheet I fill out at the beginning of each race season.  If you need a copy you can send me a email and I will send it over to you. I’m not posting my actual sheet because it has my periodization plan, goals, and training outlines (not that it matters) but I definitely won’t be giving that away, unless your Austin Hiatt (who has his own too).

I order my training objectives with how the season’s training plan goes. My first training objective for the year is a 300 watt sustained effort over a given time that I’ve set for myself.  I actually accomplished this goal last week so I was able to put a check mark next to it.  This goal gives me visual understanding that my fitness is improving according to last years best plus the gains I wanted to make this year.  I have other training objectives that are more specific as I lead up to trying to hit my mark on my seasons goals.  The importance of this worksheet for my racing is this, I have taken a snap shot of my whole year allowing me to see under a microscope where I have time to work on certain aspects of my performance along the way to reaching my goals. This plan is dynamic and able to change upon need.  Never set out and make a plan that cannot be altered when needed.  My plan each year is modified.  I go over my results and I ask myself, “can I do things better?”, “What could I have done differently that may have merited better results.”

Once you have a plan you need documentation of progress.  For myself I have training journals, power meters www.srm.de , timing systems (www.freelaptrackandfield.com), Excel files with special formulas & dry erase boards to document my progress.  For me this is the most crucial piece to reaching my goals!  The feedback from these sources lets me know if the plan is working or failing.  I told the kids in Stumpy’s class the beauty of having a plan is, is when it doesn’t work you have it written down and you can examine where the plan failed and make adjustments accordingly and get back to working toward your goal.  That is exactly why you document progress and regression, you need to see it to understand it, then you will be able to altar it.  Below is a snap shot of a training journal entry, it’s a sprint session I completed coming back from a wrist injury.  I write down my power, speed, rpm how I felt about the sprint & summarize my day and how I felt.  I find myself looking back at days that I did certain routines to see how I felt and also this allows me to see If where I am today is ahead of where I was last year at this point in the plan.

Before I close I want to share this.. I started becoming a person who approaches their goals with this kind of passion in prison and over time my approach has developed into a more elaborate scheme. This has not come without trials though. Last year in March I was ready to throw in the towel.. I wanted to quit racing, I just seemed to be working so hard yet getting much slower. I had to take some down time to think, reevaluate my approach and muster up the courage to come back at it full swing. It was because I had written plans and approaches that I was able to review what I didn’t like and what I felt wasn’t working and say to myself “I’m going to do this differently.” Without that plan on paper I believe I would of given up, the road ahead of me would of just seemed impossible. Thanks to having a plan I said, “I’m going to rework this and come back and get to where I see myself going.” I allowed failure to teach me what I was doing wrong. I allowed failure to make my new approach better and for the most part until my ACL injury things were coming together in a whole new way and this excites me about 2012! So challenge yourself to do what others may not be doing, be a lil more serious about your goals than others, walk the road less travled and see what blessings are in store! Good luck! I hope you all have a great 2012! I am going to! I KNOW it!

THoff “Tony Hoffman”

About the author

THoff