In life it is always important to make goals and strive to achieve them. It’s only by doing this that we can move forward in life and succeed. I’m sure that as a child no one dreamt of simply scraping by in life.

The same applies with your health and fitness. To continue progressing and getting fitter faster stronger you should constantly be aiming for new goals and reach new heights. This will keep you interested in your training and stop you from losing interest or becoming complacent.

The first thing you need to do is to work out what you want to achieve long term. This needs to be a quantifiable goal ie. you need to be able to measure it. Perhaps you want to lose 10 kgs or gain 10kgs. Now we need to set a time limit on it. Let’s go with weight loss.

It’s reasonable to lose 1 kg per week for up to 12 weeks with strict training and diet. 1kg is small enough that the weight loss should be mostly fat and minimum muscle. So assuming that you are seriously overweight we should be able to lost 1 kg per week for 10 weeks to lose 10 kgs.

So once per week jump on the scales and check your weight. I would only get worried if you don’t drop weight two weeks in a row. Your option then is to lower your calorie intake or increase your calorie expenditure. So either eat a little less or exercise more. However, I digress.

It can be very difficult to achieve this by yourself. This is when a personal trainer comes in handy. They will push you to reach your goals and make sure that you are staying on the right track.

The author Kyle Wood provides expert personal training Melbourne.