2023 Goal Review
Last year on the gym chalk board, I listed some fitness goals for myself for 2023. I thought I’d do a quick review here.
The goals were as follows:
At least 8.5 hours total exercise/ week
Train BJJ at least 2x/week
Maintain a 225# back squat & a 300# deadlift
At least one long metabolic day (3-4 hour hike/ bike, etc) per month
Compete in at least one BJJ tournament
Weight 175 pounds of less (settle down, I’ll explain later)
Let’s tackle the results in order, and I’ll attempt to be brief.
1. At least 8.5 hours total exercise/ week
I crushed this one. This was built off the prior year’s average of 8 hours each week. For the entire year of 2023, I actually averaged just over 10 hours. The breakdown of exercise type is shown below:
Average weekly hours of exercise by type.
2. Train BJJ at least 2x/week
I was successful here, too. I trained at Mass BJJ in Acton at least 2 times every week, save for illness or family issues, probably 48-49 weeks over the year. I had a few weeks where I maybe even went 3-4 times, especially preparing for comps. In addition, many weeks I trained on the mats here at ATC, mostly with Luis, often with Robb, and a little with Dave and a few others. A quick note of gratitude to the owners, coaches and athletes at Mass BJJ, it made being successful with this goal easy.
3. Maintain a 225# back squat & a 300# DL using the low handles of the trap bar
Success here. In 1995, as a senior in high school, I squatted 505 and deadlift 405 (cue Al Bundy and his Polk High days). Some of you who know me personally know a little about my history with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy (HCM), and someday I’ll unpack all of that in a post here. Suffice to say, I was more or less forbidden from lifting very heavy since the diagnosis in 2001. Recently, I’ve been given some latitude to throw around some heavier weights again, and have been notching the weights up safely and slowly. The goals here are more than achievable at this moment.
4. At least one long metabolic day (3-4 hour hike/ bike, etc) per month
Utter failure here. I think I managed this only 3 out of 12 months, and one of them was whilst on vacation with no constraints. I think the data on the benefits of these days is significant, and I need to find a way to do it consistently. I have no good excuse, I simply prioritized other activities and failed here.
5. Compete in at least one BJJ tournament
Back to the success category here. I competed three times, including one in-house at Mass BJJ, and two others through Grappling Industries and Fuji. I love competing, and as I wrote in this post , I really wanted to compete in front of my family. It was never just about wins and losses, but about micro-goals, too. Without going into too much detail, I had one comp where I went undefeated, and one where I went entirely defeated. The other was mixed. That said, I performed arguably better in some of the matches I lost than when I won. Judging your success by simple wins and losses is likely suboptimal. Probably this should inspire a blog post in the future about micro-goals.
6. Weight 175 pounds or less
Failure.
Ok, let me fall on my sword here. As a husband, father of two teenage girls, and educated strength coach to a variety of clients, I should have known better than tying a goal to a number on the scale. It was lazy, and given that I did publicly share it, I should have done the harder work of describing what I meant. In short, I was using 175 as a proxy for a number of other biomarkers that were slightly better the last time I weighed that much. My A1C, blood pressure, lipid panel, and sleep apnea all correlate with my body composition, as it will for many. However, let’s be clear, there is nothing magic about the number 175. If I could reliably improve those biomarkers irrespective of scale weight, I would be far more focused on that. So, apologies to anyone who has struggled being psychologically anchored to an often vapid single data point like scale weight - sincerely. Next year, I’ll be more precise with this type of goal.
In summary, four successes, two failures. On to 2024.
