The New Year celebrations are over.  Time to examine in detail those New Year Resolutions you made with such enthusiasm and commitment.    If we were to take a survey I would guess that the number one and two resolutions made each year would be “exercise more” and “lose weight”.  Many make these pledges on January 1st only to see them slowly fall by the wayside a month or two later.  Even after making a significant investment is walking equipment and gear.   The reasons for the backsliding differ with each individual.  However I would suggest that they all have one thing in common: The resolutions weren’t specific nor detailed enough to give you activity a focus.  In other words, while your resolutions may be noble in scope and purpose, they lack a PLAN. 

So what is “A Plan” and more specifically what is a “A Walking Plan”? There are three key components to any plan: Goals, Steps and Tracking.  The Goal is what you want to achieve.  Steps are the benchmarks along the way and Tracking is measuring your progress.  Miss any one of these three and your efforts are likely to fall short.

The Goal

Let’s start with goals.  Rule Number One when setting goals:  They have to be specific.  “Exercise more” won’t cut it.  You have to establish exactly what the words “Exercise” and “More “mean.  If your choice of exercise routine is fitness walking then you can make the goal a bit more specific.  From “exercise more” your goal now becomes to “fitness walk more”.  But that still leaves us with the “more” word. 

In fitness walking there are four components of “more”: Distance, Frequency, Time and Timeframe (DFTT).  Distance is how far you plan to walk.  That can be measured in miles or steps.  I’m going to walk a mile, or I’m going to walk 2,000 steps.  Time is how fast you’re going to complete your distance goal, one hour for example.  Next is how often do your plan to perform this activity: daily or weekly?  Finally when do you want to achieve these results: 6 months, 12 months? 

 You’ll need to sit down and give a bit of thought to these issues.  Decide what it is you want to achieve.  Fill in the DFTT blanks with “stretchy” but not impossible numbers.  They should represent where you want to go not where you are.    Give yourself a challenge.  Your sense of accomplishment will be greater the more you accomplish. 

 After some thought and consideration the final form of your New Year’s resolution/goal should read something like.

 “Fitness walk, three miles, 3 times a week, in one hour or less, accomplished by December 31, 2011.”

The Steps

Now you’ve got your goal.  The next question to answer is how are you going to get there?  What are the specific intermediate steps along the way?  You need start with where you are.  If you are currently walking one mile per hour, one time a week in an hour and a half… that is your starting point.  Without over analyzing things the quickest way to establish intermediate steps is to take your goal subtract your current performance level and divide by four.  In our case we want to increase our mileage from 1 to 3.  Subtracting we get 2 miles.  Divided by 4 we get half a mile.  So a half a mile becomes our mileage increment.  Do the same for time and distance.  In our example, the final increment becomes a half a mile, a half a time a week, in 8 minutes.  Then add/subtract that increment to your current performance levels and your first intermediate step becomes a mile and a half, one and a half times a week (or twice every two weeks) in an hour and 22 minutes.  Continue to add/subtract the increments to each new intermediate step until you’ve reach your ultimate goal. 

Finally you need to establish time frames to achieve each intermediate step.  Again apply the same 4 factor.  If you’re allowing yourself 12 months to reach your goal, it divided by 4 is 3 months.  So each incremental step should be accomplished in 3 months.

Your final Fitness Walking Plan should look something like this:

Timeframe                  Distance            Frequency              Time     

1/1/09                        1 mile          1 tim e a week        1h 30 min

(current starting point)

4/1/10                        1 ½ mile       1 ½ times a week   1h 22 min

7/1/10                         2 miles        2 times a week       1h 14 min

10/1/10                      2 ½ miles      2 ½ times a week   1h 6 min

12/31/11                    3 miles          3 times a week           1h

(final goal)

Tracking

The last piece of the puzzle is Tacking.  This can be simple or it can be complicated but the objective here is to monitor your progress and see how close you’re coming to both your intermediate steps and ultimate goal.  At a bare minimum you should get yourself a calendar and pencil in your distance and time after every walk.  This will provide you with instant feedback, giving you advance notice if you falling short and need to pick up your walking pace, push yourself to walk a bit further or block out more time in you schedule to devote to exercise.  Tracking will keep you engaged in and committed to your walking activity.

2010 is the start of a new decade and can be the start of a new, healthier you.  Fitness walking is the best exercise routine, bar none.  It’s enjoyable, its low impact and it’s something you can continue to do for the rest of your life.  It all starts with a good plan.  Good, achievable but stretchy goals, broken up into bite size increments with a tracking system in place watching you along the way. 

Have a great happy and healthy new year.

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