Musubi Fitness

As mentioned in my last post, you should have appropriate fitness goals. But before I get into the “what” of goals, let me address the “why”.

Why do we even need fitness goals?

I think for most people, exercising is honestly not that much fun. It’s actually kind of against the natural order of things. As hunter-gatherers and up until the industrial revolution, we moved because it was necessary to survive. When we had enough to eat, we rested to conserve energy. But now, with the abundance of food and conveniences, we don’t need to move much to get food and even then, we move in our cars to get it. So if you don’t enjoy exercising, that’s normal. Natural selection specifically selected for us to not enjoy wasting energy exercising. Read Daniel E. Lieberman’s “Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding” for more on this topic.

Which is why you need fitness goals. Having goals allows our brains frontal lobes to overcome our natural bias to conserve energy in pursuit for something else more rewarding. It’s the only way that we’ll stick with a fitness program. Sure, someday you might learn to enjoy exercising for exercising’s sake, but until then, having a good fitness goal will help you keep going. It gives you something to work for and towards. (For a sappy, but touching short film watch this on YouTube, which the above screenshot is from)

What are appropriate fitness goals?

Many people exercise for this vague goal of “better health”. But “better health” is vague and poorly defined. What does it actually mean? And how do you know that you’ve got it? For example, lots of people run or do other cardiovascular exercise for “heart health”, by which they probably mean that they don’t want to die from a heart attack. But how do you know that it’s worked? Not until you’re dead, either of a heart attack or not of a heart attack. Kind of a poor measurement, right? And that’s not very motivating, is it?

I believe that fitness goals should improve your mobility (increase your range), improve your strength or conditioning (increase your ability to produce force), or increase your ability to perform (increase your skill). Examples of each type of goals are:

Range (Mobility)

• Being able to touch your toes
• Being able to do the front splits
• Being able to fully rotate your shoulder without pain

Force (Strength and conditioning)

• Hold 1/2 of my body weight in front of me in the bottom squat position for 45 seconds
• Do 25 push-ups without pauses
• Run 2.5km in 12 minutes

Skill (performance)

• Do a handstand
• Do a strict chest-to-bar pull-up
• Getting off the ground from a seated position without using your hands

Focusing on these types of goals allows your goals to be S.M.A.R.T.

• Specific,
• Measurable,
• Achievable,
• Reasonable, and
• Time-bound.

Specific and Measurable are pretty self explanatory. Achievable, Reasonable and Time-bound are related. There are some goals that are not achievable, no matter how much effort is expended. For example, at 45+, it is very, very, very unlikely that I can be a professional basketball player, no matter how much effort is put in. That train has passed. So it’s not an achievable or reasonable goal.

Now if I wanted to qualify for the World Masters in weightlifting one year from now, that may be achievable, but is it reasonable given that I’m starting from almost a beginner level, have never competed before, and have other obligations in my life? I might be able to do it if I trained hard and focused 100% on this goal to the detriment of my other goals, assuming that my 45+ year-old body could handle all that training volume. But am I willing to do so? If not, it’s not a reasonable goal.

Similarly, time-bounding a goal too aggressively will also make the goal unreasonable. For example, if I wanted to do a strict chest-to-bar pullup by tomorrow without the base strength to do so, it probably would not happen. Your body takes time to adapt, and as we get older, it often takes even more time to adapt. So watch that you don’t set unreasonable timelines.

If you want to set more “health” type goals, like lowering you blood pressure to less than 130/85, you can do that, but I don’t think those are 100% fitness goals. There are many other factors involved, of which exercise is only one part.

How to pick your goal(s)

So what goal should you go for? It’s really up to you. If you’re just getting started and have no idea what goal to work on, I suggest starting with skill based goals. By learning a skill, you will probably also be working on your range and force production. For example, if you set a goal of being able to do 1 push-up, you need to have the strength to do the pushup. You need to have the mobility in the shoulders and arms to do the push-up. And you need to have the skill to do the push-up. By setting the skill goal, you get all three.

What skill should you work on? Just pick one. Any one. If you can easily do it, great. Then pick another one, or extend it along one of the other aspects. If you can do 1 push-up then work on getting to 25 push-ups in a row.

If you’re like me, you may have lots of goals you’d like to achieve, one day. Taking myself as an example, as at June 2025, some goals I have are:

• Hike the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island in September without getting physically hurt.
• Qualify for the 2027 World Masters Weightlifting competition
• Get a strict chest-to-bar pull-up
• Consistently get a 5-second feet together handstand
• Get a double under

How am I going to pick?

Well, given the timeline, I’ll probably work on aspects related to my September West Coast Trail hike. Exercises to get my feet, knees, legs and hips ready for long periods of walking on potentially uneven ground while carrying weight. That will be my focus over the next couple of months. I’ll probably throw in one weightlifting and one skill workout a week just to keep those moving, but the main focus will be on the hike.

So use timelines or specific events is helpful in sorting out goals. I have a friend that runs 10k almost every day. He runs almost the same route every day too. Doesn’t want to compete (although we did manage to guilt him into running an official half-marathon). That’s great and it works for him. But I think he’s the exception to the rule. I need a more specific goal, like an event to work towards or the accomplishment of a specific skill. So if you don’t know what goal to work towards, look around for an event some reasonable time out. A 10k. A functional fitness competition. A basketball tournament. Something fun and that you look forward to! Based on that, you can set specific physical goals related to that event.

Once you’ve picked your goal, how do you setup the plan to achieve it? That’s where a personal trainer or a coach can help. If you can figure it out yourself, great! All the power to you. But if you need help, get help from someone skilled and experienced with getting people to your specific goal. The internet and Gen-AI chatbots are great, but they are, for lack of a better term, based on averages. You are not average. A personal trainer or coach can meet you at your level and design a program specific to you and your goals.

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Interested in a program that you can do at home and help you improve on all these three (Range, Force, Skill) fitness goals? Check out the GMB Elements program! I use it and love it so much that I affiliated with them! If you get it and need some extra personalized help, feel free to contact me!