How To Achieve Your Muscle Building Goals By Lee Hayward
One of the "secrets to success" that is used by all top-level athletes, successful business-people, and achievers in all fields is goal setting. Goals give you long-term vision and short-term motivation. They focus your efforts and help you to organize your time and resources so that you can make the very most of your life.
By setting clearly defined goals you can measure and take pride in the achievement of those goals. You can see progress in what might previously have seemed a long pointless grind. By setting goals, you will also raise your self-confidence, as you recognize your ability and competence in achieving the goals that you have set.
Goal setting really does work in helping you get to where you want to go in any endeavour, especially one as challenging as building a strong muscular body. And the good thing is that goal setting techniques are not that complicated.
The thing is that we all have goals, whether we know it or not. They have a profound effect on our lives. So you might as well channel these subconscious thoughts and objectives and bring them to the conscious level and make an effort to control them, rather then letting them control you.
In this article I'm going to cover some simple and easy methods that I use personally, and that you can start using today to help you achieve your muscle building and physique transformation goals.
The first step is to take just 5-10 minutes of quite time each day to writing and reviewing your goals in a notebook. Start by asking yourself "What do I want to achieve?" "What would I do if I knew I could not fail?" Just let yourself daydream about this and don't put any limits or restrictions on what you want. Just write down anything and everything that you would like to have, be, do, or achieve in your life.
You don't need to share this with anyone, so just go nuts and get it all out of you. I know when I do this I'll write down some things that are absolutely absurd and other things that I consider "worth while goals", but it doesn't matter at this stage, just get it written down on paper. Write for the trash can. If you have that mentality then you won't worry about being perfect, you'll just let your ideas flow naturally.
Next go over your goals and pick out the ones that are most important to you and the ones that you are willing to spend some time and effort to achieve. When defining a goal be as specific as possible. For example, how much bodyfat would you like to lose, how much muscle do you want to gain, how strong do you want to be, write down exactly what you would like your body to look like, etc.
Then once you have a clear picture in your mind and a detailed description written down on paper. Take a few minutes and write a paragraph outlining why you are absolutely committed to making this goal a reality. Write down all the benefits that you'll get from achieving this goal. So for example, if one of your goals is to build an impressive lean muscular body, you may write down things like you'll feel better about yourself, have more self confidence, get more respect from your peers, look more attractive to the opposite sex, you could also list off all the health benefits that being lean and physically fit will provide.
Visualize yourself as already having achieved your goals, think of how it will feel to be in awesome shape and having others complement you about your new body. Imagine being one of the best built guys (or gals) in the gym and having others look up to you as a role model. Picture how good it will feel when you go to the pool or beach and be proud of how you look in a swimsuit, rather then be embarrassed about having a soft round belly.
Focusing on what you want in this kind of detail will help trigger your brain to find new ways to make the goal a reality. Once you have your goal written down and have some very powerful reasons of why it is important for you to achieve this goal, you should then write down some things that you can do right away to start moving you in the right direction towards your goal.
In the case of a physique transformation goal some things you can do right away are get rid of all the "junk food" that you have in your home. Give it away or through it away. Just get it out of your home. If it is not there then you can't eat it.
You may want to get a book or video about proper training and nutrition for building muscle and losing bodyfat. Or even get a customized nutrition and training program designed for you by a professional trainer.
You could schedule more time for exercise such as getting up earlier and doing some cardio before breakfast if fat loss is a priority.
There are all kinds of little things that you can do right now that will help move you in the right direction towards your goals. The main thing to do is start NOW. Do not wait until the time is right, there will never be a "perfect time". You'll always have some obstacles and challenges going on in your life. If you don't put your foot down and take action now then you'll never start. You'll always be in the position of "going to do" rather then "doing".
Each morning when you get up and each evening before you go to bed review your goals and visualize your success with specific and graphic details. Picture yourself completing a hard workout and beating your personal best lifts with perfect form. Envision yourself eating a clean healthy diet and turning down junk food and sweets that average folks give into. Feel the pride and confidence that comes from knowing that you are in control and you are following through with your plan.
To help you visualize your ideal physique you can get pictures of bodybuilders and fitness models that you would like to look like. Cut out a couple pictures from magazines or download them from the internet and look at them regularly, picture how you would look like yourself with that kind of lean muscular development.
After you spend a few minutes reviewing your goals write down a couple things that you did during the day that helped move you closer to achieving your goals. Also write down a couple things that you could improve upon. Promise yourself that you'll work on improving the weak links in the coming days.
I cannot emphasize enough how important goal setting is. Writing down your goals on paper and reviewing them daily is a proven method for achieving success in any endeavor.
In the case of a physique transformation goal some things you can do right away are get rid of all the "junk food" that you have in your home. Give it away or through it away. Just get it out of your home. If it is not there then you can't eat it.
