Goals with Side Benefits

Sometimes it’s best to take the backdoor when approaching your trickiest goals. This is especially important when the goal in question is unclear or subjective. One way to backdoor yourself into a positive outcome is by setting a simpler, objective goal that has a residual side effects that includes your goal.

Think about some of your goals for your work in the gym. If your goal was to “feel better”, for example, you might find that’s it’s a bit difficult to just “feel better”. How do you do that, anyway? Do you just think about it really hard? Instead, you could set a goal to be able to do a pistol on each leg, for example.

In your case, you can work on attaining this specific movement goal. Of course, along the way you’ll have perfect feedback in terms of your progress and you’ll be committed to solving this pistol problem with a host of strategies from eating better and stretching, to working on the strength and coordination required for a pistol. The reason this process works is because maybe being able to do a pistol would include a ripple of changes in your physiology that would also contribute to you feeling better.

Not only will you “feel better” because someone who is healthy enough to do a pistol may likely feel better than someone who can’t, but you’ll also have the added bonus of being more flexible, stronger, and more lean (in order to accomplish the pistol).

Is there a movement oriented goal you could set with other desired outcomes in mind?

Logan Gelbrich

@functionalcoach