Posted on December 29, 2014 by Jenny Cromack

Its that time of year again and like most I like to goal set and set new year resolutions for the following year. In 2014 I set myself the goal of developing my squat strength and like I do with my personal training clients I mapped out my training set goals and met those goals.

Setting training regimes at new year for myself is a cop out really, I’ve been in a routine since a very young age and training has always been a central role of my life. It’s very easy for me to trick myself into thinking I’ll focus on a different element of my fitness this year when really I need to be working on other aspects of my life, because in reality I’m going to train no matter what, so why set new goals there.

For those of you who know me life as a personal trainer is mapped out hour by hour, every second of every hour is planned week by week, time is more valuable than gold dust. In the last few months I’ve been reading a lot about time management and optimising work efficiency, wow have i been making some errors! It’s easy to not realise you’re doing certain things so wrong when they become routine. I’m sure a lot of you reading this can relate to this with nutrition and training, that’s why you hired a personal trainer!

Time management from what I can understand so far is a skill, something that I have not mastered yet. Like most things in life the best way to improve something is to hire someone who’s an expert in the field. To help stick to this new resolution I joined an online workshop group of personal trainers, we have a webinar once a week for 30 minutes where we learn a new skill and have a short discussion about implementation, set some weekly goals and put them into practice. I realise that I started this at the start of December but its close enough to the New Year!

This course of workshops lasts 3 months and will see me well into 2015. Something I’m very wary about is as we see in the gym people giving up after 3 weeks of training because their approach has been too radical or they simply lost motivation. The simple trick and what I focus on now is not the outcome but the process, the process is key. Instead of saying I’m going to have more time in the new year to focus on clients nutrition or my further education which is an outcome, I’m going to focus on speeding up processes that I regularly undertake and optimising tasks that I have to complete that will enable me to focus on what I really need to focus on to help my clients and the business.

Chris Baird 2015 New Year Resolution:

Process: Improve time efficiency of weekly tasks through self development of time management, and therefore reduce time doing activities that have no long term benefit in the development of my knowledge.

Outcome: More time can be spent in continual professional development for myself and thus help clients more effectively.

So there you have it, it might surprise you that my new year resolution is not related to a fitness or exercise related goals, but hopefully my goal will help my personal training client’s achieve more of their goals!