2022 Resolutions - Gym
A few articles ago, I talked about the concept of new year’s resolutions and how to actually achieve your goals. This week I’m going to give a real example of that using my very own resolutions for the year 2022.
To remind you, here they are again:
Take gym more seriously
Take basketball more seriously
Take reading more seriously
Take more pictures
For each of these goals, I’m going to go through the game plan, how it’s going so far and anything I’ve learned.
General (Notes for all goals)
I write a lot. You may have guessed. In particular, the habit of journaling - what I would define as ‘writing down my thoughts and feelings’ - is something that I have done for as long as I can remember. But only relatively recently have I discovered it to be a useful tool to be deliberately intentional in my critical thinking.
I’d like to highlight this video by Ali Abdaal in which he includes an excellent framework for thinking about one’s goals:
Ali shows us a list of prompts to answer when thinking about dreams:
🚀 Dream -
🧠 Why?
🎯 SMART Goal
⚛️ Habit?
🤯 How surprised would I be if I failed? (Scale of 1-10)
☠️ Top 3 Reasons for Failing
🦸 WHO can help?
📚 HOW can I stack the deck to succeed?
🔥 ACTION
If you are a Notion user, you’ll be pleased to know that Ali provides this as a template that you can use yourself! Link here.
After discovering this video, I thought this would be a really effective way for me to be intentional about my goals for this year.
Gym
I am writing this on yet another cloudy afternoon on the 30th of January from the computer labs on campus. We are already a month into the year and I have a lot to say. But before we jump into that, I’d like to start with my notes on this goal:
🚀 Dream - Take gym more seriously
🧠 Why?
I want to get more athletic for basketball.
I would feel more confident in myself if I looked more muscular.
The act of lifting heavy weights makes me feel really good. It feels right.
🎯 SMART Goal
I want to up the numbers on squat, deadlift and bench: 150kg , 200kg and 120kg
I want to hit the gym for an hour each time and 5 or 6 times a week.
⚛️ Habit?
Gym first thing in the morning before breakfast.
🤯 How surprised would I be if I failed? (Scale of 1-10)
8
☠️ Top 3 Reasons for Failing
If I do not prioritise it over other things.
If I feel ill.
If I don’t take care of the rest of my life: (sleep and food).
🦸 WHO can help?
My s/o can help me by keeping me accountable.
Audience - I can write an article about it so that you all can keep me accountable!
📚 HOW can I stack the deck to succeed?
Empty calendar until 1 pm for shower, gym, shopping and lunch.
Make it fun, create an Instagram account, get others involved.
🔥 ACTION
make a gym list that can be replicated each week.
So, how has that been going?
Consistency
I’ve been going to the gym pretty consistently for the past few weeks, (although I must admit I have had to skip a few days here and there for other priorities). But, I’m doing a lot better than previously and that’s something I can celebrate. I’ve been lifting pretty heavyweight, I feel good and I can see slight improvements in my physique when I look in the mirror, (hopefully, I’m not imagining it!)
Keeping Track
The perfect workout program is something I have always wanted but the more experience I have in the gym, the more I realise it doesn’t exist. I feel it’s better for me to create one myself. So I have done exactly that (again using Notion). Essentially it’s a template containing all the exercises I might want to do in a week so that I can fill in the sets and reps I performed and with what weight. It’s very crudely put together but it certainly has been working.
I’ve also created an Instagram account (link here) to track my progress and share workouts. This for me is the fun part. One of my other goals this year is to share more in terms of creative projects. I’ve always been a little shy to record myself at the gym but having done it for the past few weeks, I’ve found that no one really cares. One morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that one of my videos received over three thousand views!
Although slow, I can feel my progress. If I can keep this up, I’d be happy.
