It’s hard to belive 2016 is coming to an end already! This means that a lot of people are going to be setting goals for themselves in the coming year. These can be goals related to many different aspects of life. I’m going to talk a bit about the most common ones that we see here at Outlier and what you can do in order to better achieve those goals!

The most common goal that we see in the gym usually is diet related. Establishing control of your diet after a wild holiday season filled with sugar cookies, pie, drinks and all the other accoutrements that come with the time between Halloween and Christmas. The control may be for the purpose of shedding off pounds, to get your general energy levels back up or to better your work output at the gym. There are lots of ways to gain control and depending on your personality, the approach that is best for you may vary. Maybe going more of a quality control method like Paleo will work. This approach allows you to focus on eating more natural and whole foods. A lot less emphasis is placed on measuring or counting but rather cutting out foods that affect your body in a negative way. If cutting out bread and dairy sounds like your personal hell then maybe you would do better with a Macros or Zone approach, these methods allow you to eat whatever items you want as long as you count the food values of what you consume. Perhaps a blend of these types of approaches would sit well with you? A lot of people have a hard time sticking to an endeavor with a diet without friends in the trenches with them.

So you may be asking yourself, how do I decide what to do? Lucky for you we will be running a healthy eating challenge here at Outlier! The structure will be loose and determined by each participant. The goals, the parameters, the methods all chosen by you in order to set realistic goals to achieve and start off 2017 the right way. We will assist you with coming up with your nutrition goals that will work for you! This challenge will run for 6 weeks and we will kick it off with a healthy eating challenge meeting, body fat measurements, before pictures, and starting weight on Saturday, January 7th at 10:30 AM. We will place you in a small group of your peers with similar goals and have follow up meetings every 2 weeks throughout the challenge to touch base and share experiences. The groups will have a google doc to share eating habits and for a coach to offer feedback remotely to the group. At the end of the challenge the coaches will review what the athletes have accomplished and choose the top 3 winners. The $20 entry costs of the challenge will then go to the winners in cash prizes! The goal of the challenge is to get as many people learning about and controlling their diet in order to set themselves up for better performance both in and out of the gym in 2017.

You may be asking yourself what kind of service or challenge can I get if I want to improve my skills in the workouts and finally knock a few new movements off of your to-do list (i.e. muscle ups, rope climbs, pull ups, bodyweight snatch, etc.). Maybe you really wish you knew how to better prepare yourself for classes in the 15 minutes before class begins.

Here at Outlier we have the Hybrid Program that offers structured training to increase your proficiency in the weightlifting movements, gymnastic movements, and increasing your cardiovascular endurance. Monday through Friday there is homework provided that compliments the class programming of that day. We have times throughout the week where there is a coach in house to offer assistance to those specifically following the Hybrid program! Adding focused skill work 2-4 times a week before or after your class can drastically cut the amount of time it takes to finally unlock the achievements you are looking for!  If this is something you would be interested in talk to one of the coaches to learn more and try a week out for free!

Lastly, if you would like to have a more focused plan or want to know exactly what you should be doing to achieve your personal goals you have set for yourself then you would probably benefit from getting a few personal training sessions with one of our coaches. Having an hour for just the two of you can be incredibly useful rather than trying to assess something in the few minutes between classes. Personal training can also be the best times to go over nutrition concerns and questions as well. All of these are things that the coaches love to talk and help you with but in a class setting we can only go into so much depth on certain topics with an individual because we need to make sure to get around to everyone and to pay attention to the tasks at hand that day. Reserving sometime with one of our coaches can be a fantastic tool that is often overlooked.

Let’s make 2017 a year that gets knocked out of the park with achievements and is loaded with new records and an even deeper love for this crazy CrossFit thing that we all do!
Coach P