Setting goals

[The Hulk]

But my mate taking the piss said, "Ah, I want to be UFC heavyweight champion."
"And what would be the first step towards that?" asked the teacher.
"I'd have to start fighting," he replied.

Going from not fighting at all to UFC Heavyweight champion in four months is not a realistic goal. Five years might be more reasonable, I guess. So then his first goal would be to get into fighting, then within two years compete at some level and win, and so on. Which would lead to other goals like putting on 40kg of weight - he's not a heavyweight now - and so on.

Still not a bad goal to dream about.
If he was absolutely desperate and did all he could to get as close to that goal, he would be better off.
Even though he hasn't even started fighting yet, he could enter himself into an amatuer fight for 4 months time, even if he has to lie about his training experience to enter.
Then he could train his ass off leading up to the fight, knowing there is no backing out, this would really get him to take action.

If he set his goal for 5 years away, he may not even enter his first fight for over 1 year, maybe wanting to get more experience first and take it more casually.

When you get desperate, you get results.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

It's true that when you get desperate, you might get results.

But what also often happens is that people set unrealistic goals, fail to achieve them and so get discouraged and give up.

Part of the thing of goal-setting is understanding this in people, that not everyone has 100% perfect willpower. They need little achievements to make themselves feel good, help them keep going.

For example, we get a lot of unfit, overfat and weak people pop up here or in the gym and want some training advice. We could talk to them about benching 100%, squatting 150% and deadlifting 175% your bodyweight as goals for a year from now. But when they come in and struggle just to lift the bar once, those goals seem impossibly distant - they just give up and go.

Instead, we give them goals like: run 5km (however slowly) without stopping, and do 24 pushups, supine pullups, situps and squats, and to do that within 12 weeks. And we begin them with (say) 5 of each movement, add 1-2 movements each week. So this week their goal is (say) 10 pushups, 10 supine pullups, and so on.

Most people have very ambitious goals when they first come to the gym. And 90% give up within 3 months. The standard method of training is giving up. We make that more likely by suggesting that people should have unrealistic goals and get desperate.