Are your mid life fitness goals realistic?

Is your body moving the way it should in everyday life?

Over the past few years I have assessed countless Personal Trainers delivering client consultations. This is the part within a Personal Trainer qualification where the client information is gathered, questions are asked and then fast forward to the client goals being set. This can be very specific when working with sports specific athletes but what about the rest of us?

Regardless of if you are working with a Personal Trainer or setting your own fitness goals, my question is, are your fitness goals for mid life realistic and are they setting you up for failure? Now don't get me wrong, a fitness goal can be very motivational and provide you with a focus not to mention how you feel when you reach the goal but we need to look at the bigger health, wellness and fitness picture.

Let me give you a typical example, the non running beginner (who doesn't partake in any other 'structured' activity and leads a sedentary lifestyle) wants to complete a 5k race and embarks on a training plan for the next 9 weeks. They are motivated by better weather arriving and venturing outside, it doesn't involve a gym because that would just be too intimidating, it's cheap, they know what to do as they will follow an app, so all in all it's achievable. Motivation levels go up and down during the 9 weeks however the 5k is completed. Great stuff, the body has adapted and gains have been made within various systems such as cardiovascular and muscular skeletal.

Once the goal has been achieved the typical mid life exerciser will adopt the all or nothing approach, it will either spur them onto bigger and greater goals - fantastic - or more typically go back to doing zero as the entire focus was on a singular goal.

This is where we have to challenge our approach to mid life activity and the goals we work towards. Our bodies are made to move in many directions and as we get older the activities we do have a direct impact on the lifestyle we lead which shapes our future (in terms of movement for the average person becomes very linear).

Let's go back to training for the 5k run. The training is specific (as it should be) to achieve the goal but if no other movement or components of fitness are being included, we are training our bodies to move in one direction know as the sagittal plane. Walking, running, bending forward, leg extensions, chest press, sit ups are all sagittal plane movements. If your activity is all walking and running to achieve your 5k goal, where are the twisty, bendy movements that we should all be doing to avoid later life linear movement. Not to mention activities that promote strength and flexibility.

At this moment we should absolutely applaud achieving the 5k however I want to provoke you to think more on a daily lifestyle basis, where movement is enjoyable, simple, in the moment and realistic. How many of you have thought 'I will sign up to XYZ' then I will achieve it? Let's not discount the small things we can achieve everyday, they might not be attached to a singular goal, gym session or structured event so the natural trait is not to see them as 'counting'. A bit like going for a walk and forgetting to put your wearable tech on to count the steps.....as you don't see the digital result it almost doesn't count (and it's absolutely gutting if you have set a 10000 a day step goal!)

Our 5k run example can now complete the distance however, can they also sit on the floor for a period of time and then get up with ease, sit in a chair with good posture for a prolonged period of time, sit on the sofa and reach behind to retrieve the remote by twisting without feeling any discomfort or pick up a hula hoop and go for it!

Try and recall all the times today you have twisted and bent your body from the waist, reached both your arms over your head multiple times, lifted your knees higher than your hips and were these part of any planned fitness activity? How many times have you jumped, hopped, skipped or done a cartwheel this week? OK, so that might feel a little far fetched but my point is if our daily movement is limited in the planes of movement or just follows one component such as cardiovascular, muscular endurance and flexibility, our destiny is set to a linear shuffle across the community room in the old peoples home.

Therefore, let's challenge ourselves to have everyday activity and goals that impact the way we move and sets us up for success. Set daily goals that might not involve a gym or event or specific outcome but include pushing and pulling our own bodyweight, jumping, twisting, dancing.........everything counts as movement!

And of course if you are training for a 5k good luck, it's a fantastic thing to do.......just add in some more movement planes into your lifestyle and consider additional components of fitness such as strength and flexibility!

Thank you for reading and when you put your phone down, get onto the floor and stand up x 10!

Cara