Maximise Your Chances of Success: Reverse Engineer Your Goals

A few weeks ago my mum was talking to me about potentially getting a road bike and taking up cycling. This followed with her asking me various question about training, tips and goals to aspire for. So we sat down to talk about goals setting, essentially we started from the top and worked our way backwards.

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The top being the Veteran Women's 40 km Time Trial World Record, we then worked backwards all the way to the first ride after buying a bike. This enables you to break down each goal into smaller more achievable goals. If I handed a novice cyclist a bike and then said "Now go win the Tour De France", they probably would say thats impossible and wouldn't know where to begin. After writing down all these steps she would have go through in order to be the best cyclist she could properly be I then decided to apply this principle to my own goals in triathlon. I have always known of this method, previously working with clients as a personal trainer but never thought to do it for myself.

This is how it turned out, theoretical journey mapped out.

Of course I am not suggesting this guarantees success and reaching to very top of your list, but it makes understanding the next steps from your current position much more clear in your mind. This clarity is a powerful thing, so for example when its the crack of dawn, its cold wet and raining outside and I have big swim sets to smash at the pool and I ask myself "For what purpose am I doing this?" I have an answer, to get that sub 11 hour Ironman triathlon performance to a place where it can win my age group. And then when that goal has been accomplished I can then tackle the next one, and then the next one.

You can use this method with virtually any goal, it also helps you to identify what you are doing wrong at present, what you are doing or not doing that is holding you back, for my case its my weight, so what am I doing now? I'm meal prepping, every meal is meticulously planned with the goals in mind. I may never reach the top of this list, but having clarity knowing the steps I must take gives me far better chances of success than just blindly pursuing it.