My Fitness Goals for 2016

My 2016 Fitness Goals – all 18 of them!

Each year I like to have a fitness event to train for – something that can help define my training, achieve a few fitness goals and give me a little bit of extra focus. This year I want to dial it up a notch. Or actually, quite a few notches.

I’ve recently been inspired by the approach to training that CrossFit and Rich Froning have – training to be an elite generalist, a solid all-rounder.

By coincidence, a few days after writing an article on Rich I happened upon a Gym Jones article on gym standards. Gym Jones is an environment where the elite train and these are standards they expect their athletes to reach.

I want to reach these elite fitness standards too.

Me, a man in his thirties with a young family and a business. I want to prove to myself I can do it and discover the process I’d have to go through developing elite-level all round fitness. There are 18 standards and they represent my fitness goals for the year.

I’ll be honest, as I sit and type this having had a 10 day break from training and having consumed more calories over Christmas than a man requires in a month, it feels like a mountain to climb. A massive one. Whilst I’m giving an elephant a piggy back. Wearing slippers. And a wetsuit.

It’s going to be tough. The hardest thing I think I’d have done up to this point, I’m sure.

Where I’ve done mammoth events in the past (cycled 1000 miles in 6 days, the Three Peaks Challenge, the Coast to Coast), they all focussed on one training modality – endurance. This is different.

My elite fitness goals will require me to be an all-rounder. Over the last 12 months I’ve focussed on my strength and muscle building. This has been great – I’m stronger than ever and have added around 15 lbs of muscle, but I’ve lost a lot of my conditioning and endurance abilities, so it’s time to get these back.

These fitness goals will require me to learn new skills and do things I haven’t done in a long time – lifts I don’t do such as Overhead Squats, lifts I haven’t done for a long time such as Turkish Get-ups and then cardio challenges such as distance running and rowing, neither of which I’ve done in at least 12 months!

I’m feeling a mixture of excitement and nervousness when I see the list below, which details all of my fitness goals….

The Complete List of Fitness Goals…

Strength/ Power Standards: 
Deadlift: 2x bodyweight
Front Squat: 1.5x bodyweight
Overhead Squat: 1.25x
Clean: 1x bodyweight
Jerk: 1x bodyweight
Turkish Get-up: 50% bodyweight

Strength Endurance Standards: 
Deadlift: 25x @ 100kg
Bench Press: 10x @ 80kg
Back Squat: 20x @ bodyweight
Pull-up (straight bar, dead hang, no kip): 15x

Power Endurance Standards: 
Ten-minute KB Snatch Test: >150 @ 24kg, >200 @ 12kg
Sandbag Get-up @ 50% bodyweight, max reps in 7 minutes: (target >35 reps)

Cardio-respiratory Power Standard:
Row 500m in 1:30
Run 400m in 1:00

Cardio-respiratory Power Endurance Standard:
Row 2000m in 7:15
Row 5000m in 19:00
Run 1.5 miles in 9:00
Run 5km in 22:00

My training up to this point has led me to be able to do some of these things – of the 6 strength/power standards, I can already do 3 and I can do 2 of the strength endurance standards. The others, I haven’t really tried yet but I’m sure I’m not even close to them.

Here’s me hitting a 180kg (2x Bodyweight Deadlift)….

I’ll be documenting the whole process towards my elite fitness goals on the blog and at the end of the project hope to produce a book in which I’ll detail the workouts I did, the approach I took, my facts and figures and the start and end points, complete with pictures, videos, hints, tips and general commentary.

So why am I doing this really?

I suppose I want to prove a point. I’m in my thirties now, so if I was a professional athlete I’d be in the winter of my career. I sit at the intersection of improvement or decline – I’m young enough to make significant physical improvements, but old enough to fall into serious physical decline if I don’t push my boundaries.

If I achieve these fitness goals – if I manage to hit all of these standards, or even most of them I will have made huge strides in my strength and conditioning and it would have all been done through hard work and effort. I have a young family and a very busy job – I don’t have the luxury of all the time in the world to base my training around.

Additionally, there is an aesthetic benefit too. With the level of training that will be required to hit these fitness goals, I’d expect to see some serious physical changes that will help me shift this Christmas excess and return my physique to what it has been in the past.

More than anything though, it will be a really interesting project. I want to push my limits in a way I haven’t done in a long, long time – if ever at all. It’s the kind of journey I find really interesting to read about and learn about, so I’m putting myself forward as the guinea pig and documenting the whole story towards elite fitness goals myself.

There’ll be a lot of this journey documented on the blog, so keep checking back!

P.S. I’m giving away a FREE eBook ‘101 Health and Fitness Tips’ to everyone who subscribes to my VIP email list. By joining the list you’ll have access to exclusive content, discounts, offers and products from both me and selected partners. Click here to download!