How to Improve Every Single Week of the Year

Today we build off of last week's goal-setting mindset and explore one of the most powerful (and understated) processes you can do... setting and tracking performance goals! Learn about the benefits of how to this exact process, why it can benefit your physique, performance and skillset for rugby, and how to adjust for success and failure. 
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Transcript

TJ: 0:09

Yes. What is going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Rugby Muscle Podcast and welcome to 2024. Can you believe that we are here? Of course you can. Cause it's a fact. We are here in 2024 and now is the perfect time to build on the last episode of the podcast where we spoke about your goal setting as far as your North star, your end vision. And now we're going to build on that as a way to, um, Uh, have motivation, consistency, uh, discipline on a week to week basis as far as setting yourself weekly performance goals and reviews slash accountability. Now this is a difficult process and this is one that people don't want to stick to. And it's, it's really hard to find people that have actually stuck to this process on their own, uh, without having a coach do it with them, which is, Almost the magic source of what coaching provides is that level of accountability on a week to week basis. But, it is definitely something that you can do alone, and I'm going to try and walk you through that process of how to do so. Before I do that, let's, um, quickly say thank you for everyone that's given a review so far on Spotify, I've seen the reviews shoot up, I haven't seen them shoot up too much on Apple Podcasts, and Apple Podcasts also does hold a little bit of a ranking, so I know that a lot of you are listening on Apple Podcasts, so the five star reviews there are always, always, always appreciated, the tags on Instagram are also appreciated, the, Thumbs up and comments on YouTube are also appreciated. And if you want to continue to listen to this show and haven't subscribed, hit that subscribe button because it does also help out the algorithms, help this get into people's feeds. And now this is, you know, the idea of, um, the podcast is that this, especially information like one about to give you in today's episode is just not overly digestible on. Platforms such as Instagram, uh, TikTok, even YouTube. Even YouTube to an extent. This is a podcast that is also hosted on YouTube, but the YouTube algorithm is always going to reward stuff that people like to watch and people like to watch stuff that is more about time wasting, or more about like, you know, procrastination. This is the opposite of that. So it's just stuff that people don't want to hear. Um, but it's, it is absolutely essential for you to. Wrap your head around this if you really want to achieve special things or even just achieve Like something that you're gonna be happy with that We spoke about in the last episode so that your north star if you haven't listened to that episode go back and listen to that first Because that is how you're going to frame what you're going to do in this episode So without that there is no there is a little bit of context, but it's just basically Throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks and it's not an efficient process. Really, you want to get your north star first. You want to get your end goal in mind and then from there we can build out these weekly, um, performance goals and reviews. And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode. So without further ado, let's go. So weekly reviews and performance goals are by far the best way to maintain focus and motivation. For any for for a long period of time, right? So if you say my goal is to do this for six months or to do you know to be really fit and this is why for the most part New year's resolutions, as we have just started into 2024, never seems to stick is because people say, okay, this year I want to do this. And then they set no end goal, right? Um, likewise, if people try and say, I'm going to do this today. And then they get overwhelmed and don't do it as well. Same thing. It's there's no real context or they try and do something that's not. Really manageable in the long term. So the idea of these weekly performance goals is okay. You've now got a focus that you can't really put off because at the end of the week you're going to see whether you've passed or failed and then you build from there. Setting these goals allows you to also monitor your progress objectively and make adjustments. So whether you succeed, whether you fail, you can still then make adjustments. a lot quicker and a lot more regular basis than if you're setting yourself like a monthly trying something for 30 days or trying something for 12 weeks. I do find that programs always work really well for six to 12 weeks and that's just because physiologically it takes that long to adapt. But on a weekly basis for habit building for successful, you know, discipline, um, output. Um, weekly reviews is going to be the one it's allowed you. It allows you to keep accountable to your training, to your performance and switch things up as often as possible, but still because you've got that North star, not just approach it from like a random mindset. And that's also where the, you know, the coaching aspect can come in. But also if you're able to main maintain objectivity, this is definitely a way that you can do this. Is the way that you can really significantly improve potentially without having a coach is having this weekly review. So to set weekly performance goals is the main crux of what I want to get into. So what types of weekly performance goals am I talking about? Like, am I talking about bench press 100 kilos or squat 150 kilos or, you know, gain one pound? Not necessarily. I'm talking about performance goals as far as. Habitual stuff like attendance in the gym, not just like, uh, potentially how many times you're going to go into the gym. You can also set an upper bound and a lower bound limit. So my goal is minimum of two sessions, but a maximum of four, right? So then if an opportunity comes up where you go five, you say, no, no, I don't need to do this. I don't need to put this extra stress on my plate. Likewise, if you. You know, if you hit two or three sessions, you don't feel bad about it because you hit your minimum, right? And if it just doesn't fit into your timetable, then hitting two or three is still going to be enough. Um, you could also do this as far as like, okay, every time I go into the gym, I'm going to do 20 minutes of aerobic activity because my conditioning is not up to scratch. I could also potentially say, okay, you'll maybe the weekly goal should be, I'm only going to go to the gym twice this week. I'm going to spend more time. Prioritizing my aerobic activity because I'm unfit, but that's for another day. You could also say, I'm going to commit to my warmups and cooldowns. I'm going to commit to really pushing to failure on one given exercise, or I'm going to commit to making sure this week every time I go, I don't skip my core work at the end of the session. You know, I push my core work to the start of the session. It doesn't necessarily have to be just attendance. Attendance is just the easiest way to frame this idea of success or failure. So it's something that you want to do. And if you're someone that's inconsistent in the gym. Then yeah, weekly attendance is going to be the goal week after week after week after week, and that's okay. If you're someone that doesn't really struggle to attend the gym, goes to the gym, you know, two to four to five times a week anyway, then it can be more about, okay, what does that gym session look like as far as your end goal? Okay, so if it's, for example, if it's Someone you're someone that wants to improve your lower body strength and you always end up skipping leg day. It's going to be okay, three times a week. I'm going to make sure that I hit my lower body with, you know, some heavy work and that's going to be built in your program. And then your weekly performance goal could just be have I stuck with that program this week. You could also do this as far as nutrition goals. Now this one gets a little bit harder because people again tend to overcomplicate this stuff. Um, yeah. But this is almost self, this is almost self solving, as we're going to get into with the review. So, you know, your nutrition goal could start out by being, I just want to make sure that I get three servings of protein a day. And if you've never started from anywhere, that's a great way to start. Three big servings of protein a day. It could also be, okay, I'm going to just log all of my food for the week. Or maybe I'm allowing myself two days off, so I'm going to log my food for five days of this week, or four days of this week. Or just one day, one full day I'm going to log my food. It could be that I'm going to eat my food, I'm not going to have, I'm going to prepare my food and just eat the food that I've prepared in house, and I'm going to allow for two meals out, but they're not going to be quote unquote junk. A little bit more subjective, because what is junk, but ideally you're keeping these as objective as possible. And now finally, the other type of weekly performance goals that we can look at is a specific skill or technique to focus on in your rugby sessions. This is where you can actually improve upon your tactical understanding, your skills and your ability to play rugby better is by focusing on a specific skill or technique. For that week, right? So maybe your left shoulder tackling isn't strong. Well, in your training sessions then, you're going to put yourself in a position to actually expose your left shoulder tackling. Now, obviously, you can tell teammates this, you can put yourself in a position like maybe you're on the right wing or you're, if you're on the left wing normally, you know, you can give people the outside so that you can use your left shoulder to hit. Lots of different ways that you can do this. Um, if you're, you know, not part, you're not, your left side hand passing is weaker or your rucking, ability to ruck is weaker, then you're going to hit more rucks or you're going to expose yourself to more situations where you have to pass off the left hand. Or if you want, if you're a winger that wants to get more involved in the back play, you step into the 10 channel more. And it's just. Just a focus. And this is a little bit more subjective as far as did I do this or not, but it's just something that you need to hammer home every week. Okay. My goal is to do this this week and this can change week to week or you can stick at a process for two to three weeks. I wouldn't suggest sticking with these specific skill for longer than that because after a couple of weeks, what you'll find is you've started to look, say, let's go to the left hand par situation. Example, you've put yourself in a few different situations over the course of the two, two weeks to really, um, expose your left handed passing and, and try out in a practical setting with whether it's through your games of touch, whether it's through the handling drills that you're doing. And if you found yourself not doing it as often as you'd hope, but still getting a little bit better. Now, when you move on to something else, that left hand passing for a couple of weeks is going to be a little bit more autonomous. You're still going to see opportunities to do it, but you don't have to consciously think about it. And it's still going to be there. And then you can go back after a couple weeks and try it again. Trying to keep this a little bit looser framework so you can be as, um, As creative with this as possible because there's so many different things that you can improve upon in rugby that there's so, that this is wide, wide, wide open. Obviously, if you're have a, if you have a position specific skill maybe you're a place kicker, maybe you're a hooker that needs to throw, etc. Like, I would potentially not really consider those in this specific scenario because those are closed, those are open chain skills, those are skills that you don't really need to practice, think about in the game situations, those are things that you can practice outside, so these are more considering skills that you're going to be doing on a regular basis or hopefully a more regular basis successfully during a game, not specifically skills that are done You know, set pieces. Okay. So these can be contact. These can be non contact, you know, different passing, different rucking. It could even be a specific type of ruck. So maybe you're a confident, uh, rucker when it, when you're early in there and you're confident with your bridge position, you know, you, you can get a good handle on the, the, Oh, We lost the camera there for a second, but we're back. You're confident in your position, uh, in rucking when you get there nice and early. You can get low, you can get under the defender so they don't have an opportunity to jackling. But once they're on the ball, you find difficulty. Well, in training, okay, you can start to put yourself in those positions. Maybe a few, you do a few techniques of, of going through that against a passive opposition before training. And then you If you have the more opportunities you have, you let them get on the ball and you really try and practice that now that one's a little bit more difficult because it is dependent on you doing lots of contact work in your training session. But it's definitely something that you can look for, right? It's definitely something you adjust rather than getting to the rocks early. You deliberately get to them late so that you can expose yourself to Having to try to get someone off the ball. And if you don't, that's fine. And maybe you explain this to your coach at the beginning of the session as well. Could be a good idea, so that they're just aware of you trying to improve it, and not you being a lazy motherfucker and getting to the ruck late because you're lazy. Okay, so when we're looking at these weekly performance goals, we want them to be written down, we want them to be, um, respected, and we want them not just to be like, Randomly thrown out there and fucking fucked off after a couple days or forgotten about after You know more than a week and you realize that you haven't done it They should be written down And then the next important part about this week to go is that they should be reviewed so that it should be done on A week to week basis you review the past goals. You set the goals for the next week and you Basically live an intentional Training life as far as improvement goes as far as Working towards that North Star, that overall goal that you set for yourself, how you want to play in the future, how you want to live. So what you're going to do is you're going to set yourself a time for a weekly review. So we'll talk about how to do it in a second. The reason for this is, again, you can identify more areas for improvement. You can identify success. You can identify where you failed. So if you failed on a goal, if you maybe you set yourself the goal to train four times a week in the gym, it just was impossible of your work and family commitments and like literally was impossible. Then you have to adjust that you have to adjust and say, okay, I can't go to the gym four times a week. So what do I do? Maybe I run two times a week and go to the gym twice. Maybe I only go to the gym three times and do my condition there. Maybe I only go twice, but whatever it is. Because of that review, you're able to see that it's not your fault or the goal's fault, it's just that this isn't attainable for you and it was the wrong goal for you at this time. If potentially you could have done those four sessions, you just de prioritize it. Okay, you then say, okay, well this week I've got to make sure I do prioritize it. I'm going to set myself four again, uh, same goal. This time I'm just going to plan for it better. Maybe you schedule them into your, your, your schedule this time. Or maybe you schedule them to your session, your schedule at a different time where you're more likely to attend it. Maybe you schedule it for the first thing in the morning. Or if you tried the first thing in the morning and you were really tired, maybe you've got to go to bed earlier. But the, because of the Your acknowledgement of the failure, you're then able to make the adjustment. And the failure for that week isn't really the problem, you know? People don't fuck up because they mess up a week. People fuck up because they continually don't pursue the, or do the actions that they're required to do in pursuit of the goals that they want to achieve. That's Why people fail with their resolutions with they're trying to achieve whatever they want to achieve because of the not because of failing one week or not getting it right one week because of almost being ignorant to what they're doing and what their goal is and how they're completely misaligned. All right, so maybe it maybe you dial your goal back. Maybe you, you know, maybe you. What else could we do? We could, we could maybe then step up the goal if we achieve that goal. So say, we did two times a week, we're starting to feel good. Maybe we can step it up to three. But if we are feeling good, we're feeling better, we're feeling like we're making our improvements, is there a need to step it up to three? Potentially not. So we just keep riding that wave of success on going to the gym twice a week. Um, and whatever that means for you. It's just a case of acknowledging whether you succeeded and failed, what worked, what didn't. And without doing this review, it's impossible to know. So how are you going to do this? You essentially going to dedicate a period of time. It could be just 10 minutes, but it's got to be scheduled in and you've got to, you've got to commit to doing it because I'll be quite frank with you here. You're not going to want to do it. All right. You're going to see it on your schedule. You're going to find other things to do and This is going to feel like an inconvenience, but it's an inconvenience because subconsciously you don't want to review, you don't want to see your failures. Subconsciously, it's difficult to set this stuff and to think about it. And because it's just hard. And yeah, it's just a, it's just a ball like to do, but the more you do it, the easier it gets to keep up and the more you're going to find success from setting these goals out. So, and. Like you have to take this seriously and you're gonna have to acknowledge it. You're gonna not want to do it And maybe the first week you forget to do it or you like it's it's just a process of continually trying to do it again this is the benefit of Having a coach because they having a coach you've got no choice You've got to be accountable to your coach just like you've kind of gotta be accountable yourself But the coach allows you to Be even more cognizant, right? You're letting now someone else down if you don't do your review or you've paid for it. So then you're wasting money if you don't do review. Um, and just allows you to really take that time to and treat this reflection seriously. But that's all you're going to do really is going to reflect you. So you're going to assess your performance against the set goals. You're going to analyze what went well and why it went well. Continue to lean into that. Um, you're going to analyze what needs improvement, what quite didn't quite go as planned and why it's, that doesn't have to continually be the case and prepare for the next week. And then you're going to adjust those goals for the, and the training plan and whatever the focus is for the upcoming week, acknowledging whatever you've got on the up for the next week as well. And then that's it. So the big thing here is I want to emphasize is that you, you won't want to do this on a week to week basis. It's difficult. Okay. So. Um, you know, you set yourself, set yourself aside some time, maybe Friday evening, maybe Saturday evening, Saturday morning, Sunday morning, Sunday evening, whatever it is, you set that time aside and, and you make it a commitment to do that and making that commitment to do that then allows you to make all these other commitments a lot easier because then they're written down. They're built into your conscience. They're put out to the universe. You're actually going to do it and because you do this, you're also able to like to celebrate your success. A lot of people. Just. I just think that they are way worse off than they're doing because they haven't taken the time to acknowledge, you know, over the Christmas period, some people gonna, you know, haven't made the improve, haven't made these dramatic improvements and you're like, well, of course not because it's the Christmas spirit, but you still went to the gym three times. So that's actually a success that you could celebrate, right? Whereas emotionally, um, Not even subconsciously. Emotionally, we want to be hard on ourselves. We want to tell ourselves that we've failed. And it's a lot easier to do that. Because then it gives us an opportunity to give up. Or an opportunity to tell ourselves that we're not enough. Whereas, objectively looking at these facts. Objectively looking at your goals. How you achieve them. Why you achieve them. Or how you didn't achieve them. Why you didn't achieve them. It doesn't just allow you to learn from the failures and build towards the next week and continually adjust. But it also allows you to celebrate the successes of what you've done, acknowledge the successes of what you've done, and then lean into those to create the momentum that will eventually get you to that end goal. Okay, so this is definitely something that you want to do. Set aside some time, set out two to three goals, don't set out a million. And again, this is a process that. Is is undefeated anyway, because if you think about it, if you set yourself too many goals, eventually, maybe you don't really acknowledge that for the first few weeks. But after a few weeks, you're gonna be like, fuck, I'm just trying to do too much. Okay, I've got to do less. And then by virtue of this weekly review process, you do less, right? Because of because of the fact that you've acknowledged that. So I really just think set aside a time, set yourself two to three goals that you want to do. Set yourself one skill Tactical technical focus for your rugby if you're in season that you want to focus on for the week. You could also This is this is a random tangent thrown on at the end for the the skill development, but you can also Look at other games of rugby and look for that skill element that you are trying to improve upon So even if you're in offseason, maybe you can watch games of rugby And just look at someone who's removing a jackler that's already on the ball for the, uh, uh, earlier example, or look at an outside back that steps in to be more of a playmaker and how and what, how they do that, how they get more touches on the ball and you're just watching it. So rather than having to do it in practice itself or in training itself, you're, you're still acknowledging that technical and tactical adjustment, but you're doing it just by watching games of rugby. Okay? Um, but yeah, make sure you do this guys. This is absolutely incredibly powerful. If you've enjoyed this, uh, podcast, give it a thumbs up, give us a five star review. Let us know in the comments below if you want to participate in the next, uh, rugby athlete blueprint. I'll put the links to that in the description below. If you want to sign up for one on one coaching or, um, our year round programming service, also links in the description below for that. Share this episode with a mate that. Wants to be held accountable that a teammate that wants to improve for 2024 um Next week we'll build upon this even more but now we'll talk about actual practical applications Um, I think we'll kick off with hypertrophy When we're talking about rugby muscle when we're talking about building out, um, the optimal rugby athlete. We can't get away Without talking about hypertrophy nice and early on so we'll do that next week. Hope you look forward to that Hope you're having a great week. Hope you're having a great start to your year and i'll catch you in the next one