Transcription:
Setting Attainable Fitness Goals in the New Year

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): Welcome back to the Well Within Reach podcast brought to you by Riverside Healthcare. I'm your host, Gabby Cinnamon. And today, Matt Grossman, a personal trainer at the Riverside Health Fitness Center is chatting with us about how we can finally stick to our new year's fitness resolutions. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast today, Matt. can you tell us a little bit about yourself and why we should be taking advice from you?

Matt Grossman: Yeah. So I'll start just from where I'm from originally, because Illinois is not my home state, but I am originally from New Jersey. I grew up there basically all my life. My parents are still living there. So I'm from the east coast. I would say I'm more of a city person than a country person. So coming into Bourbonnais, Illinois was a bit of a change for me. But, now I'm here and I've just been enjoying, you know. I went to school and all of that. I originally was looking to move away from the house a little bit. I wouldn't say I'm a home body by any means, but I do love my family still.

But I came to Olivet. I played soccer there and I really did enjoy my four years while I was there. And then, I graduated the COVID year. So in my attempt to kind of decide whether or not I should start looking for a job when I graduated or just continue on for more education, I decided that I wanted to pursue some more education just because, in this job field, personal training, obviously, was not looking too bright when COVID hit. So I just graduated this past August from Eastern Illinois University with a master's in exercise physiology. And while I was there, I was also a graduate assistant for my program. And that just gave me tons of experience working in the hospital, doing cardiac rehab and stress testing and also working with our fitness program there, teaching classes, guiding our members to live healthier lifestyles and just become more active and try to help them achieve their goals too.

I also taught a bowling class, both semesters while I was there. So, by no means I'm a bowler naturally, but I was able to score a 220 towards the end of the semester.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): Wow. Very cool. Well, you have a very interesting background for sure. Kind of getting into the topic of today, so there's a lot of marketing and messaging in the new year about getting in shape and weight loss and fitness. And it's almost messaging pollution I feel at times because you have fitness influencers or celebrities always giving their advice or at least that's how I feel. When I go on Instagram, it's everywhere. Do you notice, as a personal trainer with your clients, that they are tending to set their fitness goals in the new year right now?

Matt Grossman: Yeah. And I think everyone sets some goals for the new year, whether it's fitness related or just life related, like, you know, "I want earn some more money" or "I want to be a better person or better myself." So I think there is a lot of goal setting that comes with the new year, which I think is a good thing to do. It's always good to reevaluate the past year, past years and just try to improve on anything we've done or maybe take away some things that we've been doing that we think aren't really useful to us anymore.

But I also want to touch on this, I agree with you that a lot of what we see on social media, I think a lot of is the platform is going to benefit more than the actual user, just because we're not seeing all the hours it takes for fitness stars to put in behind the scenes to get that perfect shot. So I think at times the social media platforms can be a little deceiving. But, with the members that I've talked with and then just my own clients and working at the fitness center, I think people do set a lot of fitness-oriented goals or even it might be some of the people who are listening, like, "I just want to live a healthier lifestyle. I want to increase my stress. I want to be able to walk up a flight of stairs maybe without being winded or working on that cardio endurance." So I think there are a lot of good first thoughts in those goals that they set. But I think there's always ways that we can keep on improving and go for more of an objective goal to a more narrow and specific.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): For sure. And that kind of leads into my next question, is if you could kind of talk about some of the mistakes that people make when setting fitness goals, I think I was reading an article and it talks about how 80% of people don't stick to their new year's resolutions. And it wasn't specifically talking about fitness, but I think fitness kind of fell under that umbrella because that is a huge part of a lot of people's resolutions, as you talked about leading a healthier lifestyle, getting in shape. But if you could kind of talk about some of those mistakes that people make that you notice where they might not be able to stick to that goal?

Matt Grossman: Yeah. So this, I think, I will continue to touch on throughout the rest of the podcast. But the first thing I want to just touch on is I think there's a mistake in just being too broad with our fitness objectives. So like I was saying, you know, saying "I want to be stronger," saying "I want to lose weight," those are all good goals to start with, but they're a little bit too broad.

So an analogy I like to use is, let's say, generals in the past, let's say they were fighting an enemy and the general tells his troops, "Hey, the goal here is I just want you to defeat the enemy," and that's all he says. It's going to be pretty confusing and there could be a lot of what does that even mean? "How are we going to do it? Are we using airstrikes? Are we doing a land invasion?" Things like that. So there's a lot more than just that goes into just defeating the enemy because it has to be planned, it has to be a very specific way. And I think it's very similar to our fitness goals in that if we say I just want to be healthier, well, what does that really mean? Does it mean I want to decrease my blood pressure if I'm having high blood pressure? Does it mean I just want to be active every day for this amount of minutes? Does it mean I want to increase my steps per day? Or the goal is I want to be stronger or build strength. Do I want to squat more? What movement do I want to train and be stronger in? So there's a lot more, I think, than just a broad, "I want to be this" because there has to be a specific goal.

And to touch on it a little bit more, I think there's two ways that you can kind of narrow it down to a more specific goal. One is the objective goal. So that's the goal of, "I want to be stronger. I want to lose weight." So we start with that goal, but then we also have to have a plan of action. So the plan of action, it's not the fun one. It's not the one that everyone looks forward to every year where they're like, "Yes, I can't wait to sit down and come up with an every day list of what I want to achieve." And I think for someone who's just starting out in the gym or maybe they'd been off for a while and they want to kind of get back into working out, exercise, we want to get as many wins as possible as quickly as we can.

So that's where the plan of action is very beneficial, in that you start very small. So it could be, "I just want to attend the gym two or three times per week." So that first week, boom, you already completed one of your goals and you break it up into smaller goals. But the end goal is we have that objective goal of like, "I want to lose weight." Plan of action, we have the strategy to do that. So, it could be, "I want to be in the gym two, three times per week. I want track my calorie intake." And we'll get into this a little bit more in the podcast too, but calories don't have to be hard and they don't have to be scary. So I want to say that to the start, is we don't have to see calories and get scared and think I have to restrict everything I'm eating to see gains or to see benefits from the food we intake daily.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): So, can you kind of touch on some of the fitness misconceptions you hear from your clients? You talked a little bit about this in like the goal setting. Are there any misconceptions that you commonly hear from your clients?

Matt Grossman: Yeah. And I think the misconceptions I hear most often always relate back to social media and what they were seeing online. In a way, it's good that we can see, "Oh, my buddy or this fitness person I'm following hit a new personal record. They hit a new weight that they'd never hit before," that's great. But it's also unfortunate because we live in a day and age where we can just really compare, compare, compare ourselves to other people. So if someone who's only been working out for a year, it can kind of be discouraging to see someone who has been working out for five years and then the things they've been achieving, so progress goes slow and steady. So I think a lot of those misconceptions come from seeing what others are doing and then looking at where we are and getting discouraged by the amount of progress that we would have liked to make and then we haven't made or just seeing someone and be like, "Man, I'm never going to get to that point."

But everyone has a different capacity for how much they can achieve in the amount of time. You know, some people may just be at genetically a better position to lift more weight. So like I'm never going to be an NFL linebacker. It's just never going to be possible for me. So I think the misconceptions there are just comparing ourselves to other people when we need to understand where we're coming from and then the timeframe in which we can achieve the goals we want for ourselves. So there's a timeframe issue. A fitness star or, you know, you see these Hollywood actors. They're like, "We lost 30 pounds of fat in 10 weeks and you can do it too." It's always a "You can do it too," which you might be able to do it, might be a really unhealthy way to do it, but it's not always "you can do it too," because they devote their lives to getting in shape for that role.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): It's their job.

Matt Grossman: It's their job. We always have to leave room for life. Life is never going to take a step away and give us a break. It's always going to be there. So we always have to have a little bit of room for life. And I think that's another misconception, is that once life happens, we can be like, "Oh, well, man, I'm just never going to be able to get back on track. I'm never going to be where I was." And I think we also need to have grace for ourselves in that we don't talk the way we talk to ourselves, to our friends. So we need to have the mentality of when life happens, when things do go wrong, we need to think, "How would my friend talk to me in this situation?" So we need to have that, because we always are going to be our biggest Debbie Downer. But if we were to talk with our friends, they're always having a positive outlook for our life, for the most part. I mean, those are the kinds of friends you want to have.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): I would hope that you're not hanging out with people who are bringing you down.

Matt Grossman: Yeah. So we just got to think, you know, "What would my friends say?" Or "I wouldn't even talk this way to like my enemy maybe." So those misconception of the timeframe in which we can achieve our goals, the mentality of getting down, when we think we mess up, meaning life will happen, maybe we were off for a day, off for a couple of weeks, maybe in a couple months, but it's always just about getting back on track and having a positive mentality about that. So I think those really are like the two big issues. But for the most part, it really just revolves around what we're seeing online and then the timeframe that we can actually achieve that in.

I always push we're not just working out for a couple of years. We want to work out until the day we can't work out anymore or be active until the day we can't be active anymore. So it's really just a life journey, not just a "I'm in it for a couple of years. And then I've reached my capacity," because there's always something you can find and do. Obviously, as we age, things will change. It's not like we're going to be able to lift or do the things we were able to do, you know, 20 years ago, but we can always continually adjust and then continually be active as we age.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): I think those are really good points and emphasizing that it's a lifestyle choice. And I think positive lifestyle change for the future, I think is a really good thing to emphasize for people too. So kind of changing gears and getting a little more positive, how can we set better fitness goals for ourselves and kind of avoid these mistakes of not realizing all of the steps that it takes to get to a goal or having negative self-talk that can hold us back? What can we do to change that and set better goals for ourselves?

Matt Grossman: So we have our objective goal of like, "I want to lose fat" or "I want to lose weight," something like that and then using an action plan. So in addition to what I said earlier, I think going forward from the new year, if you're really like, "Hey, I want to set some goals. I want to see some change in my life," that's great. Then this podcast is for you, because I think I have a good strategy for you guys to use.

I love this quote by, I believe it's Bill Gates. He says, "We always overestimate what we can do in one year and we underestimate what we can do in 10 years." And that 10 years can be five years, it can be seven years, it can even be two years. And I think that's really true because it's not bad that we've come into the new with a high expectation of, "I want this, this, this, this, and this. And I want to see all this change." Like I don't think that's bad. I think that's good that we're motivated. But what I see often that happens is the reason why going back to your 80% of people just quit their new year's resolutions is because once we see that we failed, we quit. It's just very calming that once we see that we're not going to achieve our goal by the year end, we see that as a failure and we quit. So with that, we have to understand that it's not just a year. It is good that we have a expectation to like have a lot that we want to do with our life in a year. But going back to Bill Gates, you typically overestimate one year, what we can do in one year, and we underestimate what we can do in multiple years. And I don't necessarily like to have a cap of like 10 years, but we underestimate what we can do for the rest of our life.

So, one strategy that you guys can use to continually just check up on your goals is have that objective goal of if it's, "I want to gain strength. I want to gain muscle," good. Stay with that goal, but then, that first week or whenever you have time, I want you to take an hour, take a full hour, come up with an action plan of very specifically what you're going to do for that goal. So if it's strength training or "I want to get stronger" or "I want to be able to lift my grandchild up," I want you to have consistency. So every week I'm going to be in the gym once a week. It can be something like that. Then it's, "I'm going to work on these exercises to focus on if I want to have a bigger bench press or if I want to, you know, lift my child up," you need to train specifically for exercises that will help strengthen those muscle groups to be able to do that. So take an hour. It's not going to be fun. I'm telling you right now, it's not going to be fun to sit down and come up with a very specific plan and also don't overwhelm yourself because we can burn out pretty quickly. If we have a high expectation of every week of what we want to do, we can burn out really quickly.

So like I said earlier, we want small wins very quickly. So setting one or two times a week, all right, boom, first week, you got it. Training, these exercises. "Okay. I did it." Getting adequate amount of hydration throughout the week, throughout the day. So there's water bottles now that'll even tell you a timeframe of how much water you should be drinking throughout the day. That might be something cool to just have with you. And, once again, don't get down if you don't drink a whole gallon of water in a day, but kind of be aware, like we need to be hydrated, we need to have an adequate amount of water in our body. That's another thing that I often see that we are just usually very dehydrated, not very hydrated throughout the day, but that's also very important.

And then, so going back to the first time we set our goal, so spend the hour. Six months from that date, so halfway through the year, come back to your goals, it will make sense. It's like, "Oh man, like, I've lost maybe five, ten pounds. But the reason why I'm losing it is because I'm staying with my action plan." And you can look back and see, "Hey, like I was consistent in the gym for, let's say, 90% of the six-month period," and that's a big win. That's something that you can be really proud of. And like seeing it will help you be encouraged and continue on.

But this is also a time to reevaluate whether this goal is appropriate or not. I do this all the time with my own fitness life and it's something that's really helped me, is I always am re-evaluating. I reevaluate every couple of months. But for you, I'd say six months, stick with one plan, reevaluate, and then see, you know, maybe the goal isn't any more to gain strength, maybe it's, "Man, I really want to run a marathon or something crazy like that." So it might be, "I need to start working on cardio" or something along those lines. So it's always good. And I wouldn't say stop after the six months. Every six months, I would say, keep reevaluating your fitness goals, keep reevaluating whether it's appropriate for the life stage you're in, you're fitness journey. Because like I said earlier, life is always going to happen and God forbid you lose someone in your family or you come down with a sickness, those are things that can really take you out for a while, but that's why it's always good to continue to reevaluating, seeing whether or not it's appropriate.

And, you know, if you do get a couple of months down, couple of weeks, maybe a couple of days, you're not always going to be motivated and ready to go every day, leaving the gym feeling like, "Man, I was the man there or women. I felt so good. That workout was great. I'm ready to do it all again tomorrow," because it's never like that. It's never Hollywood perfect where it's never the perfect picture. We're human and we're going to have life that's going to come and just mess up a lot of our plans. But getting back on top of things, getting back on track, that's always going to be our best friend there. And I think accountability is a great way also to go into the new year and be accountable to yourself through your checklist there.

And then one thing in addition that I like is I know setting a lot of objective goals, so it could be three, four, five, ten, however many you have, I think when it comes to the fitness life or just getting into an active lifestyle, set one or two goals. One or two goals is all you need and focus on them. Each year, you can just adjust those goals, but don't overload yourself with a bunch of things at first. Choose one or two goals. And like I said, it's going to take an hour, all right? So I want you to take the full hour, think of one or two goals max, maybe three if you're feeling really ambitious, but don't overload yourself. Don't put a full list on when you know you could be getting two hours of sleep at night, all right? Being smart in how we choose the goals we want and then not overloading ourselves, I think will also just help us keep our head on the shoulders, not really overloading that schedule.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): For sure. Because, you know, if your head isn't in the right place or you're not focused, then how can you stick to the goals that you've set?

Matt Grossman: Yeah.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): Kind of going back to, you know, you said setting these goals and creating a plan for yourself, maybe you're just feeling very overwhelmed doing that alone. Can you touch on how personal training or getting a personal trainer can help you with setting those goals and maybe the difference that that can make for someone?

Matt Grossman: Yeah. With personal training, I think there is a psychological aspect to it. So there's this term called exercise adherence. Exercise adherence is how well we adjust to doing exercise or let's say we're going through physical therapy. It's how well we're able to come in, be consistent, do our exercises, whether we're liking it or we're not liking it. And then with exercise adherence, there's another term called self-efficacy, which is how well we think we're doing it. So someone who's very strong, let's say they're a pro bowler, they're going to have a very strong self-efficacy because they're confident in their skills. They've been doing it for years and they're going to have a really strong ego per se. So I think building self-efficacy is important for our exercise adherence and staying with our new year's resolution or even just staying with our active lifestyle for a couple of years and then for the rest of our life.

Now, everyone doesn't start with self-efficacy in one area. Self-efficacy is built. It's not something that just comes naturally. Similar to like we're not all good at let's say playing a sport, playing a musical instrument. I mean, there are people who are just naturally talented, I'll give them that. But for the average person, those are things that we have to build up to. Those are the things we have to practice. We have to put in hours. Whether we've liked it or not, it's not always going to be fun, but that's how we build our self-efficacy, is getting confident in what we do.

So a personal trainer at Riverside, I think is a great step in building our personal confidence because you not only have just another way to build exercise adherence, you have to come in for those sessions. Canceling on someone or skipping out, it's like we'll always feel bad because we're canceling on someone, so that's your trainer. And you know, we at Riverside, we love you guys. So we get sad when we get canceled on or things like that. So, that's just building a routine. And routines are also so important for exercise adherence because when we start getting into routines, it just starts coming so natural. So I'm sure everyone who's been at a gym before or who is working out, there's some routine you guys go through when you get to the gym. It could be you walk in, you greet the front desk, you're scanning your card, head down to the locker, put your old stuff in the locker rooms, then walk out. Maybe it's warming up on the treadmill. So everything we do in life, we do it in a routine, whether we're consciously seeing it or subconsciously, we're doing routine, whether we think it or not. And routines are so important for building the exercise adherence.

So going back to personal training at Riverside, the reason why it helps build it is because we help you build a routine. And it's really up to you, you know, how many times you want to come into the gym. We're just there to be a guidance of accountability. And then we're also there to build your self-efficacy or self-confidence because you can come in knowing nothing, not even like what the machines are called or even what body part they're supposed to be working. But you can tell us your goal and we're doing the hard work for you. We're thinking through every scenario and then we're also there to build your confidence because we want you guys to be able to come into the gym by yourself and be able to do a full workout, knowing full well that you're not going to get injured, that you're not going to feel awkward because you don't know how to use the machine and that you're doing a workout that's beneficial, and it's not just going to be a waste of time for you.

So with personal training at Riverside, we offer that accountability through just meeting up weekly. We're not just going to only talk about fitness. We like talking about our lives, we like talking about your lives. We're there for you. And we're building that confidence because once you have that confidence, that saying, you know, it's going to break it or you're going to make it, it really is going to help you make it, so you don't lose that confidence. Because as soon as we lose our confidence that's how we quickly just, you know, "Man, the gym just didn't work out for me. I just felt uncomfortable." And I'm not saying everyone's going to feel super comfortable coming in the gym. I completely understand. It's a new setting. It's like starting a new job. It's starting something new. And I completely understand and have a lot of empathy for people who do struggle with just being in the gym setting, being there, and just feeling awkward and almost kind of rejected from the gym because they just haven't done it. So I understand that.

And that's where I think personal training as well is like, we're there, we want build your confidence up with our facility or just being in that setting. We're there to guide you and help you achieve the goals. So it's awesome when we can see our clients taking baby steps and then hitting a goal or being able to do something they never done before or feeling stronger throughout the day, more energy. With fitness and being active, your mood and your emotions actually change for the positive. You can actually feel endorphins and hormone release. After a workout, you can feel better than you actually came into the gym. So I think personal training is a great step forward into whether you're pursuing just trying to be active. And so it's a great way just to start. It's a great way to continue your fitness journey and we're just there to guide you along the way. We're there to be your friend.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): I think that's a really great advice and definitely, you know, don't be overwhelmed into looking into personal training and personal training, as you said, isn't just for people who have like knowledge of the gym or you can go in and not really know anything and still benefit from personal training for sure. So I think that's a great place to end off on. Before we go, do you have any last advice for us or anything else you would like to add?

Matt Grossman: Not everyone's going to enjoy working out. I understand that not everyone's going to enjoy using the machines and that's fine, but it's something that we have to do. It's just something that we have to do in our life if we want to be able to play with our grandchildren when we're older, if we want to be able to be active when we're older. It's going to help us so much down the road. So if there are days that you're not feeling like, "Man, I just don't want to go In and work out in the gym, my advice, just try to find something where you're being active. That could be just take a walk through the park, go rollerblading or do something that you enjoy because that's also a huge part of building exercise adherence, is a lot of it may be unenjoyable and that's just a tough side of being active, but there's also the side of you can do things that you enjoy, where you're being active. So don't get down on yourself for it, "Man, I should've just gone in the gym and hit some weights and instead of walking around the park or playing with my dog outside," but don't get down on yourself because you chose to be active that day instead of maybe just going home and sitting on the couch all day.

So going forward, I really would encourage you. It's not always fun. And if you're a person who just really there's nothing you like to enjoy, then try to find something that you really can substitute a day where you're feeling like that, where you're just being active. So I really encourage you just to be active. And then challenge for maybe this year, take that first step and sitting down for that hour, coming up with that objective goal and then coming up with an action plan.

And then one last hurrah going forward is I know calories are something that are scary and we don't often like to talk about it and there's whole bunch of information out there. And if you look up, you know, what is a calorie, you might even get stuff of like how to lose fat and whatever just by looking up calories. But for another challenge I want to put forward is just start tracking the amount of food you intake. The only way we're going to improve our relationship with food is by understanding how much we eat in a day.

Determining how much we eat is important. We need to know. And through that process, you can grow so much more and understanding that you don't need to restrict all your favorite foods. You don't need to starve yourself every day, like that's just nonsense and silliness that a lot of times you might see where it's like, "Go into a thousand calorie deficit and you'll be fine." That's just so unrealistic. So start just by tracking, "Okay. For breakfast, I ate one bowl of oatmeal and a banana." Just start by doing the very broad basic food intake for your day and just be consistent with it. It's okay if you miss, you know, a few days, just get back on top of it. And then from there, you can really just start going into more specific. So once you get into like, "Oh, like I know how much about I'm eating per day, and this is kind of starting to get a little easy," start transitioning to, "Okay. So how many calories is a banana? How many calories is a bowl of oatmeal?" And then start tracking the calories.

And then from there, you can go into, "How many grams of carbohydrates am I eating." So you don't just have to hop right into, "All right, grams of carbohydrates, grams of fats, grams of proteins. And how much should I be getting each day?" Just start so basic, "I'm eating one banana for breakfast, oatmeal, lunch, dinner, snacks in between, just so you can see for yourself how much you're actually eating in a day and being like, "Man, I ate like 10 doughnuts today. Maybe I should cut that down a little bit." So that's just a way to build a healthy relationship with being active in a gym or being active in general, but then also understanding how much food your body actually needs for the day without having to restrict and be silly in that, like, "All right, I'm just going to restrict all the foods I like and only eat rice and chicken for the next 10 years of my life."

So things like that, just small steps and you can progress them so much more. And I think you really will benefit from doing this just because, you know, another way we decrease our self-efficacy is our lack of knowledge and just feeling like, "Man, I don't really know what I'm doing." So just like we would see a personal trainer for resistance exercises, learning how to use the gym, you can also see a personal trainer from nutrition appointments. And the more you know, the more you're actually going to be able to build a healthy relationship with your nutrition, with calories, and also in the gym, just being healthy, understanding what exercises are going to be best for you.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): That's a really good point. People don't realize that everything's related. It's not just the working out, it's the nutrition. And, you know, just enjoying overall what you're doing in the gym or going for a walk and finding things that you like, it's all connected. And I think sometimes people don't realize that. So that's some really good advice.

Matt Grossman: Yeah.

Gabrielle Cinnamon (Host): So, thank you so much for joining me today, Matt. This was a really fun podcast to record, and I think it'll help a lot of people in setting their fitness goals for the new year or you don't have to wait for the new year to set fitness goals, you can set fitness goals anytime of year. So, if you're interested in learning more about getting a gym membership or personal training, definitely check out Riverside Health Fitness Center by calling 815-929-1200, by visiting rhfc.me or by stopping by the fitness center for a tour located at 100 Fitness Drive in Bourbonnais. And thank you, listeners, for tuning into the Well Within Reach podcast, brought to you by Riverside Healthcare.