Crossfit Local Chapel Hill: The Importance of Setting Goals in the Gym

by Coach Chad Edwards

Last weekend CrossFit Local’s coaches had the awesome opportunity to meet Greg Amundson
during the Goal Setting Seminar. He was an excellent speaker and made me think about
the mental aspect of life and Crossfit. In this blog post, I hope to relay some of the information we learned there. By trying these techniques, I am sure your performance will drastically improve.

Positive Self-Talk:

The goal of positive self-talk is to reaffirm to yourself exactly what you intend to do with
a positive mindset. There are five key points to self talk:
1. Self-talk occurs before you say anything, do anything, or feel any emotion.
2. Self-talk can be fast – even when you are unaware, it is there.
3. You can become aware of your self-talk. You have to LISTEN.
4. You can change your self-talk.
5. Your positive self-talk will have a positive effect on your performance.
Ideally, your self-talk should be concise, focused, positive, and memorable. Greg suggested
we use this talk as a mantra in our heads. Some great examples of a positive mantra: “Dip
and Drive”, “I can do it”, “keep going” or even something as simple as “Go”. As
CrossFitters, we want to focus on pushing ourselves with our own mind. Each of us will
work a little harder with a coach yelling in our ear to get back on the bar during Fran.
Over time, we want to develop the capability to motivate ourselves through positive
affirmations. These positive affirmations will act as a mental coach helping us push
through the pain towards that new PR.
Greg gave a great example of a time when he was competing during the early days of
CrossFit. There were two athletes in the final event and this event included muscle-ups —
a skill neither athlete had done before. One athlete completed the other exercises, and on
his way to the rings told Greg, “I will get my first muscle-up today.” The other athlete,
on the other hand, had a negative mindset and said, “I will not be able to complete the
task.” Guess what happened? The athlete who said he would complete his first muscle-up
did exactly that and went on to win the event. The other gave up after several failed attempts. The second athlete then reaffirmed his negative attitude and failure by saying “I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it.” This story resonated with me personally. All
I could think about was the Carolina Fitness Challenge and the third event with heavy
wallballs, deadlifts, and burpees. The entire day I told myself I would not be able to
complete the WOD in the 10 minute cap. As expected, I went at it with poor effort and
did not complete the WOD. Afterwards, I reaffirmed my poor performance just like the
athlete above did with muscle-ups. Looking back at it, I now know I could complete that
WOD if I tried again and stayed positive.

Goal Setting:

In life, and in CrossFit, it is important to have both long- and short-term goals. At the
seminar, we came up with a seven day goal, a one month goal, a six month goal, and a one
year goal. While long-term goals should be in the back of our head, short and immediate
goals are most important. When accomplished, they build confidence and become
stepping stones to a long-term goal. Greg listed four points of performance for setting
goals:

1. The goal must be specific and concise.
2. The goal must be positive.
3. The goal must include a time frame that is challenging yet realistic.
4. The goal must provide you with intense inspiration, motivation, and direction.

Keep these points in mind when writing your goals on the whiteboard this year. I think
a lot of us have a tendency to write a goal on the board and then just expect it to happen.
We should chose a goal and work at it on a daily basis using several short-term goals. For
example, I currently have a goal on the board to squat 300 lbs. I made a short-term goal to
do a strength squatting session at least twice a week. I have kept up with this for the past
two weeks and I believe my goal is in range in the very near future.
Finally, I wanted to share a saying Greg gave us that he took from Ghandi:
Your thoughts will become your words.
Your words will become your actions.
Your actions will become your habits.
Your habits will become your character.
Your character will define your destiny.
Keep this in mind for both CrossFit and the real world. I am sure it will make you think
twice before saying you cannot do something.

Crossfit Local in Chapel Hill - a strength and conditioning program centered on functional fitness. We believe that people of all ages and levels of activity benefit from combining basic functional movements in varied ways to elicit greater personal fitness. We use pullups, lifts, gymnastics movements, running, rowing, climbing, kettlebells, sandbags, and even tire flips to produce rapid fitness results. We specialize in not specializing. We train the young, the old, the professional athlete, the weekend warrior, the student, the parent, and the beginner. CrossFit produces world class athletes and healthy individuals.