Months of Muscles: A compelling goal

I've been going to the gym for years and getting, well ... nowhere really. Sure, I was relatively fit and healthy for my age but if you'd asked what I got from all of the hours I spent in gyms I would not have been able to answer.

It was only when I took my first round of Michelle Bridges 12 week body transformation that I realised the importance of having a goal. It's the great motivator. During all those wretched hours spent training and eating right you can visualise yourself achieving your goal and it really gets you through. And then, once you reach the goal, you get to celebrate it, and look back at how far you've come, and there is a sense of empowerment in that.

For many people weight loss is a great goal because it is simple and it is measurable, but what happens when you don't want or need to loose weight.

Last round of the 12 week body transformation I had the half-marathon to get me through, but during the Months of Muscles finding a goal that is strong and compelling enough to sustain me through 12 weeks of hard work and consistent eating has proven to be more difficult.

One of my main motivators is the bikini, but it turns out that it's not quite compelling because I just don't care enough with what other people think of me**. Another is to climb the overhang at indoor climbing, which was fine, until I reached that goal in the first four weeks of the program.  Seeing the weights I can lift go up,  some abs peaking through and being able to do three whole chin ups is probably reward enough to keep me going for a while, but is nowhere near the driver that the half marathon was.

Some people doing the program have been complaining about losing their mojo, and I guess I can see that if I don't reassess my goals in the next week or two that I'll be in the situation too. After all mojo is just a cooler word for drive, and how are you going to drive if you don't know the direction you're headed.

** Although I have heightened the goal somewhat by committing that I will attend the finale party in my bikini (gulp)