welcome back to the healthy bit my name's henry and i'm hayley and this show we talk about how we
can make practical stackable healthy habits and making our life much healthier from food to
movement and mindset changes so that's our show and if you enjoy the show please do share leave
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And today we are going to look at setting goals. So this time of year, it's a classic
time where people want to make healthier change, but it's a really good way to start looking
at what it is that you want to do and actually really thinking about what that goal means
because everybody's goal is different. And I think if you don't get the goal setting right,
we often see in clinic this failing and then people are left disappointed or injured because
they haven't thought carefully through what it is that they want to achieve.
So for goal setting at this time of year, we like in physio, we like to call it smarter goals.
So that can be broken down. And so the S stands for specific. So we look at what specific goal
you want to do so that can include what is it so what is it that you want to do who are you going
to do it with is it something you're going to do on your own is it something you want to do as part
of a team is it something you're going to do with a friend is somebody else going to join you who's
at the same fitness level or are they going to join you and they're at higher ability than yourself
and also how much of a challenge do you want to do so that's where we start with with this specific
side of things. And then we're going to look at more depth as the setting goals in terms of how
measurable is it. So without something measurable, so it might be how strong or how much, how many
kilograms or how many repetitions you might do or something, or it might just be a distance. It
might be how far you want to go can actually really determine whether your goal is going to
be set up correctly for you. And then we want to think about whether it's achievable. So is it,
Is it achievable in the time frame that you think you're going to do it in?
And is it something that you really want to achieve this year or is it something in the next few weeks?
Is it something next year? Have you got your timings right alongside that achievable?
And then that feeds into the realistic side to the as part of the SMART goal.
So what's your real reason for doing it and is it relevant to what you want to do?
so if you want to break it down into smaller chunks then those smaller chunk goals need to
add up and lead into a bigger target really and if it doesn't work then it's just going to break
down and you're not going to get you're not going to be able to move on and then thinking about the
time side of things so how quickly do you want to be able to do it okay so a lot of people start to
struggle with okay well i want to do it now and you've got to try and think about okay as physios
we talk about okay how long does it take for something to change like how long the questions
we get asked are how long does it take for you to get stronger and we would say on average six
12 weeks for a muscle to to really change and get strong so if you if you want to suddenly become
i say that really super strong you're not going to do it in a in a month's time you need to kind
of gradually introduce load and we need to set a realistic time to the goal otherwise you'll be
left disappointed and feel like you're you're failing at your own goal set and then what you
do is once you've got your goal set it's a really good idea to keep having moments within that
training schedule or whatever it is that you're following as a plan to evaluate where you're at
so keep checking in a little bit like a check-in with a teacher you know how am I doing because am
I on target or am I behind? Because the R of smarter stands for readjust. So do we need to
then look at, do we need to tweak it? Have you gone past the first few stages of your goal quicker
than you thought? Or are you a bit behind? And that might mean that the rest of the goal needs
to be changed. It's a really good idea to sort of almost write that smarter, like acronym, down
And then you can actually really think about what it is that you want to achieve.
Because a lot of people are just too global with what they want to do.
And they haven't carefully thought through how they're going to actually get to that point.
And it's a really good process to do for yourself.
Because often you'll go, well, I know what I want to do.
And I know how quickly I want to do it.
And it might be realistic.
But they haven't really thought about the measurable methods to know whether or not they've achieved it.
So some people go, well, I don't know if I've achieved it or not.
Because it might not be as straightforward as running a marathon.
You know you've got to the end.
It might be that somebody wants to be able to do everyday life with less pain.
So how do you measure that?
So there different ways of doing that and everyone goals are different So goal setting is a really almost quite a fun and really good mindful thing to do at the beginning of every year what got me thinking was
the that sounds fantastic and i know smart through work so quite often if we're setting
objectives or kpis you know or project to work quite often you know someone sends me and will
be like oh have you made it smart you know oh yes yes let's make it smart and you go through those
things but I'd never it never even occurred to me that that was something that you should do
from a kind of um you know from a personal exercise thing and that is it's such a like
no-brainer because you're like well and and also I'd never heard the the ER on it that's that's a
new one to me I like that so make it smarter I guess this is the kind of classic time of year
where people wake up on January the 1st and then what was it people do like spend a lot of money
on a on a gym membership and say they're gonna you know something get a six-pack or you know um
whatever it is and then you know they're all very motivated and then within a couple of weeks they've
given up so actually you know people have been through that journey and now we're going to help
and make it smarter i love it so good yeah what what like okay so imagine me so i'm like i you
know at the beginning of the year i want to try and like you know i'm not running very much or i
you know is it is it good to say my objective is i just want to be fitter and a bit more you know
I don't want to get out of breath when I, you know, run up a hill or whatever.
I just want to be a bit more active.
Because that's quite vague, like, oh, I want to be fitter and less unhealthy.
Is it good to kind of really be a bit more specific and go like, well, actually, let's set a goal.
So that could be, you know, doing a park run or that could be running a local 10K in March sometimes.
Like there's actually like something that you're aiming towards that then gives you, and then you can kind of break it down.
Or is it good to be a bit vague?
Like what's your experience?
The more specific you can be, the better.
Because a lot of patients will come in or people, anyone will come to me and say, I want to be able to do this.
And it's really vague.
And this is where breaking it down is really important.
Because like you said, I want to be fitter.
What does fitter look like to you?
Because fitter, if you said to me, I want to be fitter, my perception of what fitness for you could be very different to what your own perception is.
so for me it might be i might be thinking like okay henry wants to be fitter so thinking about
your age we might be thinking about okay we need your cardiovascular um rate your heart rate we
need your pulse rate to drop at certain points after exercise by whatever factor um we should
be looking at a maximum heart rate based on your age because you can do 220 minus your age which
gives you your maximum heart rate and then as a training zone you're sort of working in sort of
70 to 80 percent of that to try and keep your heart rate at a good good training level um so
that might be how i interpret that and it might be that i think okay yeah you might want to run
faster without getting out of breath you might want to um cycle so fast so it depends on then
what your equipment is and what it is that you enjoy because if you don't enjoy doing something
you're also going to fail at whatever it is that you're trying to achieve when we say fail we
obviously mean you're going to be left disappointed if you if you don't feel like you've got out of it
what you wanted to put into it so it's it's getting that right because what the smarter analogy is
really great for breaking it down and being quite specific I always think that one of the well the
last e should also be enjoyment because yes otherwise if you don't enjoy it you're not
going to stay consistent at it and that's that's really important so for you Henry in terms of
And if we try and set you a goal by the end of this episode,
for you, Fitter, what does that look like?
I guess probably running is something that I have never particularly enjoyed.
I don't run very often, but there's probably occasions where I have to run
and then I feel a little bit out of breath.
Or actually where I live is quite hilly.
So, you know, I'll take the dog out for a walk and then he, you know,
he runs on ahead and I need to like catch up with him.
before we get to the road and I'll be a little bit out of breath.
And I kind of think, oh, that's not a good sign.
I should probably be able to make it to the top of this hill
without being, you know, completely huffing and puffing.
And so that would be something I would be like,
that would be how I feel a little bit fitter.
I don't know.
Yeah, so probably being able to run a bit better
without hurting myself or being out of breath too quickly.
Yeah, so they're all good measurable parts to that.
So when you say you don't want to be so out of breath, so you can even score things like that out of 10, like how breathless were you when you did run a certain distance.
And also not just the kind of breathlessness to go, but like pain levels or injury rates.
So, you know, did you hurt yourself or did your knee tweak you or, you know, you're feeling it in your back when you last ran.
So you can use all those things as objective markers.
And that's often the what like from the person who wants to set the goal.
that's usually where they're coming at.
So it's usually they want to be in less pain, faster, quicker,
and just be in the best scores they can.
And then as physios, we tend to bring in various elements
to know whether or not you achieving those goals So it might be we might look at your flexibility rate we might look at how strong you are in particular muscle groups especially the
ones that are mostly used in running so we might look at calf and soleus strength and hamstring
strength and core strength and back strength we might set those testing against um specific
markers in terms of where do we want you to be at and which level do we do we want you to be at so
we know you're at less risk of injury and there are little markers like can you do 25 heel raises
is is quite a good little marker to say that's quite tricky to do especially on a single leg or
it might be hopping and can you hop for a minute without any pain so a heel raise is that a heel
raise is that where you stand flat-footed and then you go up onto your tiptoes and then back down
again gotcha yeah so do that on one leg 25 times okay well I'll have to try that yeah so try that
And, you know, is it equal?
So then we're looking at, you know, is it easy?
Can I do it sitting down?
That's cheating.
No, that's cheating.
Okay, fine.
I'll start that.
As a test.
But to be honest, you can, I think in the previous episodes,
we've talked about how you can strengthen your soleus in sitting.
So you have your feet on the floor and you can lift your heels up
against the resistance of your hands on your knees,
or you can put a weight on your knee and that will help to strengthen you,
especially if you're at work or if you're in an office-based environment
and you can't get any exercise in, it's better than nothing.
I'm doing it now. I'm on 10.
You're on 10.
I'm on 10.
You want to test yourself on a single leg
and see if you can do 25 on the left and 25 on the right.
And then you're looking at things like, is it easy on both sides
or is one side like, wow, that was really quite a lot harder
on my right side than my left.
And it might be that you're running and you think, actually, yeah,
my right ankle feels a bit dodgy and that might link.
So there's lots of tests that you can put it up against.
And then if you wanted to sort of say, okay, yeah,
do I really want to achieve that goal? Is it relevant to you?
Is it relevant to your life and what's the reason for it?
You had a little bit of an emotional connection as to why you wanted to
achieve that, Henry. It was quite interesting.
You might not have realised you wanted to keep up,
keep up with like children, family, life, look after yourself.
So there's that emotional, you know, what happens if I can't be as good as I can be?
We're optimizing our performance and our functional level.
So if we can be as good as we possibly can, you're going to be pleased with that.
You're probably somebody who's, there's different personality types, isn't there?
And you clearly always want to achieve the best you can be, which is fantastic.
So that's your, maybe your reason or your motivation to do it.
So that's good.
And then looking at time, so your running goal for you, Henry, might be how quickly would you ideally like to achieve that?
And then based on how well you do with your, maybe as one area, 25 heel raises, how quick is it that you can get good at that?
Because that might help you carry over into distances.
And then breaking down your distances so you don't just try and run.
Because a lot of people just run.
they go i want to be better at running so i'm going to just run and actually there are so many
other ways to be better at running and you don't always have to just be running to achieve that so
you might be doing some elements of core work strength work and swimming you might be just
doing flexibility you might be focusing on your stretching you want good muscle strength you might
be doing some weight resistance training all of that is is a really good way so you want that kind
of general package and we would generally feed in some of those things to keep you on target
when you're actually doing your doing your run or working towards your goal and then after a while
we'd say okay let's check in with the physio to see how you're doing and to see you know week two
week three how are we doing what are your markers we might get you back in and test your levels again
and see if your flexibility so you can't touch your toes or you can't touch my toes you can't
I can't touch my teeth.
There's certain satisfactory levels and markers that we use in clinic quite a lot.
There's a lovely combination of tests.
Would that be considered unsatisfactory?
Depending on where you are.
If you're miles away from it, Henry, probably yes.
Yeah, quite far.
Yeah, and I can touch my shins.
Is that good?
You can touch your shins, yeah.
So we'd probably set you some hamstring goals.
So that you don't then tweak your hamstring because you've tried to up your running and making that sort of really, really quite specific.
It's interesting about the toe touching because I've always been really inflexible and I've got, I'm from a big family and lots of my brothers are actually very flexible and they're kind of, you know, as a family, we all look quite similar and we're kind of similar build.
And yet there's half my brothers are very flexible and, you know, it's no problem.
and yet I'm the least flexible.
Now, my daughter can put her legs behind her head,
so she's got absolutely no problem.
But my son, he looks similar to me
and he's kind of a similar body shape
and he can't touch his toes and he's 10.
So I don know whether like you know can you I often used to blame my kind of flexibility on that i you know worked in kitchens and i you know was just been like kind of hunched over and
i've kind of quite kind of um and and i've done a lot of cycling so i've got quite strong
tight hamstrings i guess because i cycle quite a bit but then interesting seeing my son who you
know he plays lots of football he's very you know he's very active but he also can't touch his toes
and i'm like well maybe is it you know maybe it's not my salt or actually do i need to do more
stretching. I'm trying to cope, aren't I? I think, yeah, that's quite tricky to comment on unless I
saw exactly how restricted your son is on his touching his toes. I mean, if you've been into
cycling and your son likes to play football, they're quite quad dominant exercises. So then
you need to focus on the agonist antagonist muscles. So they're given some attention and
love to your hamstrings um and like you say you stand in a kitchen where you lean forward and
that's going to tense up the hamstrings they're going to be on a constant kind of firing so they
might get quite tight as a result of that and sometimes you can have short and weak muscles
and because they're you know they're kind of contracted and they're not very strong and then
sometimes you can have stretched out muscles and they're and they're quite weak so or any
combinations of those it's it's breaking it down into what injuries have you had before and any
tightness and hamstrings can leave you more predisposed to back pain so you'd want to kind
of address that and make sure you are really caring for your hamstrings because generally
muscles are pretty forgiving um and they will you know with constant input you you can create change
and some people just have to work a bit harder on that there could be genetic factors involved
because hypermobility does tend to do that.
They don't fully understand exactly why.
We obviously know quite a bit about the collagen
and the effects of what's happening with hypermobility.
But in terms of genetic links,
there seems to be a consensus that it does seem to run in families.
So maybe that's where that's come from for your daughter.
And, you know, there's always a parent who says,
is it my fault because I'm flexible?
And actually you look at both parents
and maybe both of them are hypermobile or maybe one of them is
and one of them is exceptionally stiff.
But you can grow out of hypermobility in your hands particularly.
So it doesn't always relate.
But yeah, in terms of a goal, so then for you,
if you know that that's your area of weakness,
that's where physios can really help because you can look at all the kind of pockets
or anything that's caused somebody to stop reaching their target
or their goal in the past, they might say, I tried to run a marathon and I will classically
sometimes see people come into us in desperation about four weeks before their marathon because
something's gone wrong. And we'll always advise that someone comes in just before that because
we can try and stop them hitting that kind of issue. But yeah, it's a really interesting thing
to look at the whole person. And that's where setting, they say using work smart goals and
putting it into an exercise base environment is really good.
And that's something we've worked with for years because it's such a useful strategy.
Yeah. And you can see change as well, which is good.
Definitely. Can you run through the acronym again?
Yeah. Just so I've got it.
Yeah. So for SMARTER, so S is specific, is measurable.
A is achievable. R is like relevant or your reason for it.
t is time like how long you can do it for e is for evaluate so checking in where you're at and r is
for readjusting so if anything needs tweaking you know do you need to modify the goals you need to
kind of reset it and doesn't always mean that that goal's out the window if it's going wrong it just
might mean that you need to lengthen the time that's going to take you to do it it might mean
that the objective markers that we set so the ones that we talked about say for example you couldn't
do five heel raises then we need to look at other scores and give you exercises to to help you reach
a higher level so that's the that's what it all stands for so smarter goals brilliant i love it
such a great time of year to you know if you want to try something different or you've got something
that you want to fix or you know um whether it's running a race or you know being able to touch your
toes now is a great time of year to you know set those goals make them smarter and then and
Actually, it'd be really, what would be wicked was if any of you listeners have decided to do it, let us know how you get on and what goals you're setting.
You know, I think that'd be, you know, really interesting and also help, you know, motivate and encourage each other.
Yeah.
And if anyone wants to send in, if they're struggling to set themselves a smarter goal, then I can look at it and say, we need, this person needs to look at this area.
And so that would be a good, good discussion point as well.
So yeah, send in any questions, anyone too.
Definitely. Brilliant. Well, thanks, Hayley. And yeah, thanks for sharing that. That was
super interesting. Right. I need to go back and set myself some smarter goals for this
year.
Absolutely. Thanks very much, Henry.
Cheers.