When it comes to training, we tend to set very specific goals: lose a certain amount of weight, gain a certain amount of muscle, look a certain way, be able to perform a trick or movement, or lift a some specific weight

It is common, and even more so now that the beginning of the new year is approaching, to see people with goals such as “lose 10 kilos”, “gain 5 kilos of muscle”, “have squares in the abdomen” or “manage to do the muscle up, the plank and the front lever.”

The problem with this approach is that our ability to achieve these specific goals depends on multiple factors, some of which are under our control, such as our discipline, our training, our diet, our rest times, our habits. But there are also many that we cannot control, such as our genetics, our starting level, injuries, illnesses, stress, studies, work, social and family obligations, etc.

This means that if your goal is something as specific as “gain 5 kilos of muscle” or “doing the straddle planche in 3 months” that involves so many factors that you cannot control, the difficulty of achieving it is unnecessarily high.

Furthermore, these goals encourage the use of more aggressive and therefore more unsustainable strategies, making the probabilities of failure increase considerably. It is very common to see people who go from having no control over their diet and eating all kinds of processed foods to suddenly having a super strict and restrictive diet, and we all know how that ends. It is also common to see people who go from never training or minimum training to wanting to train 5 days a week with specific hour and a half routines, and we all know how that ends too.

These examples are very clear cases, so you understand what I am proposing, but if you think about it, it also happens with more subtle cases.

For example, the person who wants to "master the straddle planche, or the front lever, or the muscle up in 3 months.” It is very common that when faced with such a specific objective and so influenced by factors that we cannot control, the person adopts a fairly aggressive strategy of training planche, starting with more advanced progressions than what corresponds to their level, putting in some very hard training, forcing his joints beyond what they can bear… and not allowing his body to recover properly.

This inevitably leads to problems with: injuries and pain, frustration with the lack of progress, accumulated fatigue and many comments and messages sent to me telling me that they are stuck or that their forearm hurts.

So instead of setting such concrete, uncontrollable goals that you may or may not achieve, set goals that focus on the part you can control: the process. Imagine that, instead of wanting to lose 10 kilos in 6 months, your goal is simply to gradually eat an increasingly healthier diet. With this objective you will not have to suddenly change your entire diet at once and put yourself on a super restrictive diet, but you can start by just removing some of the less healthy and higher calorie foods and replacing them with others, and when you have already gotten used to this change and you have internalized it, do the next one.

As you can see, this is a much simpler approach to carry out and much more sustainable that, however, will still give you very good results, without you having to suffer and without you feeling like giving up.

As you can see, just because the goals are not so specific does not mean that you do not have to work on them. In this example that we have given, you also have to be proactive, you must have discipline, you have to monitor that you are taking the correct steps, etc. The difference is the perception of success or failure and the unnecessary pressure you take off by not depending on factors you cannot control.

Let's look at another example regarding training, what would happen if instead of having a goal of gaining 5 kilos of muscle, your goal was simply to try to ensure that your workouts are increasingly better designed, that they have the appropriate intensity, and that your diet becomes increasingly better and alligned with muscle mass gain?

You could introduce, without pressure and gradually, changes according to that objective. For example, you could go from training occasionally and without a schedule to training at least 2 times a week and with a torso-leg split and add a protein shake to your diet. When you adapt to it, you could adjust more and more finely, adding days, making more adjustments to the diet... and you would always be meeting your goal, enjoying the process and obtaining very good results.

With the topic of doing the planche, the front, the muscle up, the handstand or any other movement, what would happen if instead of aiming to get the straddle planche in 3 months, your goal was simply to train planche with consistency, with good technique and with training well adapted to your level? This way you could go little by little, without rushing and enjoying the different progressions without feeling of stagnation and without pain or injuries, which in the long term will make you achieve better results.

A very curious case is that of MrBeast, the most successful YouTuber in history. In various interviews that he has done, he always comments that his goal was never to reach a certain number of subscribers, nor a certain number of views on the videos. His goal was simply to “make better videos.”

Look at the paradigm shift that a goal as simple as that entails. By focusing on making better videos, he focuses on what is under his control, and does not depend on algorithms, luck or other factors beyond his control. And this does not mean that he does not have to work hard to achieve it, or that he does not have to make an effort, in fact MrBeast is a person obsessed with his work, what it does mean is that to achieve his goal he only depends on himself, and the results of visits, subscribers and others are just a collateral benefit of meeting your objective.

Set goals related to your habits, your diet and your training. And always focus on what is possible and sustainable according to your current situation.

If you have little time to train, do not set a goal that requires an hour and a half of training, set the goal of getting the best possible workout in the time you have, whether it is 10, 20 or 30 minutes. If you have a terrible diet, do not set a goal that entails an instant drastic change in it, set yourself the goal of making small sustainable changes to have an increasingly better diet. If you have bad genetics, don't set the goal of achieving the physique of a famous bodybuilder or an Instagram influencer in 3 months.

The key to achieving great results is adherence, that you are able to stick to your planning for long periods of time and to do this you have to focus on aspects that are under your control and that are realistic with respect to your current situation.

Finally, I remind you that you can buy supplements and sports equipment at Prozis.com with my code YERAI and thus support me as a content creator and also tell you that at Calisteniapp we are preparing something for the beginning of the year related to the topic of this article, so download it and stay tuned.

I hope it helps you, that you set goals that you can achieve.