Time to re-focus

It’s now a fortnight since I completed Tough Mudder. My bruises have pretty much all gone and I finally feel recovered. It’s taken longer than I thought it would, not helped by having a cold in the week after, so I’ve taken things easy and given my body the time to rest and recover that it so obviously needed.

But now that I feel back on form again it’s time to re-focus on my goals.

I have two ‘long term goals’ right now

1) To get my body fat into the ‘ideal’ range – for me that means under 25%

2) To complete the London Marathon 2014 in under 5 hours

But both of those are quite a long way off so I need some intermediate goals along the way – and a plan to get me there!

I know that in order to run faster and more consistently the best thing for me to focus on is improving my strength and continuing to reduce my body fat levels. And I know the best way for me to do both of those things is by following Julia Buckley’s Fat Loss Fitness Programme alongside mostly clean eating.

Reformer Pilates session at Tempo Pilates and yoga sessions at Good Vibes are really effective additions for me. The former has and continues to do great things for my overall strength, particularly my core, and the latter helps me to stretch and strengthen but also gives me time to switch off my brain from the world.

Julia has a new group of people that she’s coaching through her course at the moment and they are just about to enter their last 5 weeks. So I’ve decided to join them in the second half of their programme and I’ll supplement that with Pilates and yoga sessions each week.

I’ve set myself some very specific goals that I want to achieve in those 5 weeks, to keep me really focussed. They are:

1) To get my body fat to under 30% – it’s currently at just over 32% – a pleasing 4% drop from when I finished Julia’s programme back in April

2) To lift 50kg for a bent over row – I’m currently lifting 47kg

3) To chest press 2 x 15kg – currently pressing 2 x 14kg

4) To be able to do a pull up – currently a long way off!

To help with number 4 I’ve just invested in a pull up bar for home so that I can practice regularly, which is going to be key. I’m really impressed with it so far – a nifty bit of kit which is very sturdy, doesn’t look like it’s going to pull the doorframe down but also folds up to store away flat.

What no running goals I hear you say? Well, actually no. Everything I’ve learnt from Julia this year has convinced me that there’s more to running well than just running! By focussing on improving my strength and reducing my body fat I’ll do more for my running ability than I will by spending hours pounding the pavements. Of course I’ll be doing some running too, but for now it’s not my primary focus.

So that’s me sorted for the next 5 weeks then. And with that I’m off to practice my pull ups!

What are your goals at the moment? What are you working towards?