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Are you SMART?

No, I am not talking about your intelligence level. I am talking about your goals!

SMART goals is not anything new but do you use it when you create your goals?

The reason why I am asking this is because if you have made goals, founded on SMART, you will actually have real goals and not only talk and dreams.

Is the answer, to my question above, was YES, I would like to tell you that you should not continue reading. You know what you are doing, but to give you some sort of help, maybe this article on how to make the goals into tasks, might help you. And also, write down your top 3 goals in the comments and we can all keep each other accountable

So, what are SMART Goals? Let us get into it!

S – Specific
Your goal needs to be specific! Like, real specific! “I want to be in better shape” is not specific. “I will hit a Back squat of 125 kg” is specific!
M – Measurable
Can you make data out of your goal? Can you see where you are today? Can you follow along of how you are performing on your journey toward your goal?
Can you measure “better shape”? No you can not, because it is not specific. But you can measure how much you can back squat, its therefore measurable.
A – Achievable
Now this part is a bit tricky! Because we cannot control everything and sometimes, shit goes sideways and you wont achieve your goals. But you have to ask yourself, are they impossible to achieve ? If they are not, you can continue with the goal. Hitting 125 kg in back squat is not impossible, therefore its achievable. Look for people who have done it before and you will know that it is achievable, for sure!
R – Relevant or Realistic
Is this goal relevant for your overall plan in life? Is it realistic for you to have this goal? If your plan is to be a great parent one day, maybe setting a goal of a back squat at 125 kg is not so relevant. But if training in the gym and squatting heavy is something you LOVE to do. Yes, it is relevant.
T – Time based
So this really wrap the goal together. Your goal needs to have a set deadline! Because if it doesn’t, you will not know if its achievable, it wont be completely specific and you will not know, for sure, if its realistic or not either. “I will hit a back squat of 125 kg before the 1st of May of 2019!”
Now your goal is complete. Bring out the next one and repeat

I hope this made it a bit more clear on how you should be creating your goals! The next post, will probably post in the end of this week, I will share my own goals. Because I think that accountability is important and sharing your goal will only help you stay put and work hard for them!

Now go and think a bit extra of your goals, let me know about them so that we can have a conversation about them! Making them extra crisp!

Have a great day!

/Andreas Sandström

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How I will manage my goals and stick to them in 2019!

I, like many others, have goals in life and thing I would like to achieve. I can talk more about these goals later but right now I would like to talk about the importance of deploying patience towards your goals. And what I have really come to understand when it comes to how I, and probably everyone else, can really help oneself to stay on the track and therefore keeping the cool and not give up just at the very beginning.

With our goals comes, at some point, tasks that need to be done in order for us to reach the goals that are set! Without tasks, these goals are just dreams. And these tasks will now be put in to our everyday life, that is usually already packed with small chores and “needs to” (you know, cleaning your home, cooking etc etc).

Usually, at least for me, what will happen when you try to jam in new tasks in a very busy life is that these new tasks will just be ignored and before we know it, we have given up our goal that we set up.

So, how do we solve this problem? Because this is not easy! How do I make sure that I have time and energy for the new tasks?

Categorizing goals!
First you need to categorize your goals, you need to list them into what is the most important and down to the least important goal. I also think it can be good to write a small note of why a certain goal has that certain importance. Ask and answer the question “Why is this goal on third place of importance and not second or forth place?”.

Turning goals into tasks!
The goals you have, will stay as goals and dreams until you turn them into actual tasks! For example: I have a goal of uploading 150 instructional videos to youtube during 2019. So I need to turn this goal into tasks. Tasks like listing the videos I want to make, recording the videos, edit, write descriptions and uploading! All of these are tasks that I need to do in order to upload 150 instructional videos.

Planning your tasks to fit your life!
So now you have categorized your goals after how important they are to you and then you have turned the goals into tasks. And, as you might know, tasks can be placed into a calendar. But the importance of your goal will also tell you what tasks you should focus on first! Thereby you will be able to prioritizing what tasks you should start with.

This is how I am doing in order to stick to my goals and not end them just right after starting! And I will , in another post, put out my goals here for you to see and for myself to remind myself of them. The more often, the merrier!

/Andreas Sandström

Back to writing!

Family, friends and the people that we surround ourselves around will always shape us and we will always shape them. Humans need the connection with other humans in order to live! We need our tribe! Having others around us, showing us love, makes us thrive, learn and become the people we are meant to be.

But we cannot just be someone within a community without giving back! We cannot expect to take without giving, without showing love back, without teaching and supporting others in the areas where we are the strong ones! A community is grounded in just that: People giving, not taking.

I have found that I am sitting on some knowledge on strength and conditioning, health and nutrition. Now, I am not sitting on anything that no one else is and most of what I know is probably out there on the web already! What if one more were to talk fitness? Health? Nutrition? Does that make for good or bad? I think good! I would say that if I can provide with truthful, science-based knowledge and to do it in a way that is unique, then why should that be bad for anyone? Everyone wont like it or get something out of it. But What if one person does? Then I would say that I have made some contributions to a community. Also, me sharing my knowledge, my experience and my journey of learning more, might be able to trigger some awesome discussions and thereby developing more knowledge!?

I am writing this text as a new start, as a new beginning to this blog! I want to share my knowledge within the realm of strength and conditioning, health, sports and nutrition! I want to share everything I know and do so with the intent and goal of helping you in finding your way to health!  Shedding some light on the darkness of this area. For example: What is a good diet? How should you train to develop a better and stronger benchpress? What is a deadlift and why is it such a great exercise? What are macros and micros? How is health defined? Etc. Etc. Etc.!

I am dedicated to rearrange this blog into a place where there are articles, written by me and maybe, one day, by others as well. I want to build up a library of information around the subjects of health, strength & conditioning, sports, nutrition. Yeah, you name it!

So let us begin! I hope you would want to join the ride and follow along as I develop this library.
I want to end with a question, a simple one. What would you like my “first” post to be about?

/Andreas Sandström

My goals 2019

As I promised, I would list my goals of 2019! I will give you some notes on them, to why I decided on these goals and some insight to what I am doing to reach them.

Completing my 60 University Credits in 2019.

I am currently on my journey to become a certified high-school teacher in Physical education and Biology. It is a five year program and I have a history of not completing every course that I have taken (for many different reasons) so for this, I am setting my own foot down and not letting failure be something that repeats itself. How? You may ask. Well, I am planning my studies in front of everything else, it is my number one priority. Job, training and other activities comes second hand! Making sure that I know what I need to know way ahead of an exam or assignment as well as doubling down on parts where I might struggle, not relying on luck.

Second semester (first of 2019) just started and I am off to a nice start. But I also know that later this spring, there will be some challenging parts, with tons of reading and writing to do!

Improving my fitness level, measured by the Relentless method leveling system, to a level of 15 before 1st of December 2019.

I can get more into detail about the level system that I am using in another post. It would require some typing to explain. But to give some cred, it is made by Marcus Herou and is very sophisticated and well thought out! It is based on aerobic capacity, Bending, squatting, upperbody pulling and pushing strength as well as weightlifting with a base of ones body weight.

My fitness level, at this moment, is at 11 and the goal is to get to 15 before 1st December of 2019. I am already at level 19 on my aerobic capacity but under 15 on all the other factors. In order for me to reach level 15 on the other categories I would have to be able to do these with the bodyweight of 98 kg (current):
Bending: 195 kg Deadlift(180 kg now), 105 kg Power clean (I got that) and 83,3 kg Power snatch (I have 85+ kg now)

Squatting: 162,5 kg Back squat (I have 145 kg) and 147,5 kg Front squat (I have 120 kg now)

Upper body pulling: 99 kg Seal row (90 kg right now), 33 kg extra weight pronated pull up (20 kg right now) and 14 strict pull ups (12 right now)

Upper body pushing: Let me show you with a picture

Weightlifting: 123,5 kg Clean and jerk and 99 kg Snatch

These stats might change as my body weight change over the course of this year. I am a bit overweight and it hinders me when it comes to a lot of the gymnastics but also with the expectancies on the heavy lifting. If you weight 90 kg, the level requirements for deadlift will not be the same as for someone with a BW of 98 kg.

Completing a Ring Muscle up before 21st of February 2019!

This is simple, I will be able to perform a Ring muscle up, not required to be strict, before the CrossFit games Open starts, 21st of February.
It is not far away, both the deadline and the achievement!
The challenge lies with me not really figuring out how to pull enough with my lats to get high enough over the rings in order to land in the dip with control!
I can promise you a video will come of when I get this! And maybe a small update here on the blog, but make sure you follow me on instagram, it will be there first!

Build up my economic buffer to mirror 4 months of my current income before 1st of September 2019.

I am, honestly, not good with money(okey I do not have any creditcards and shit like that but I suck at saving!) and this is a challenge that will require me to really be tough to myself! My income right now around 700 dollars. With that, I am aiming on building up my buffer to $3000 (a bit more then 4 months of income).

With a tough and very detailed budget, I will make this (already at $700+).

I might talk more about my thoughts of managing money if I feel like I can talk enough about it. I’m excited to learn with this one

Uploading 150 instructional videos to Youtube in 2019!

On my Youtube channel, I upload instructional videos of exercises that I give to my clients and that I use myself. I want to put out more of these and build up a smaller bank of videos for people to see and use in order to make their training better and thereby their health better.

Go a head and check out my channel and maybe even subscribe if you feel that you get anything out of doing that. If not, let me know what I can do in order to help you 🙂

Some ending words

These are not many goals and I do have some micro goals and goals that are not based on SMART yet but these are the ones that I have my focus on for 2019!

Let me know what your goals are in a comment below! Now go and have a wonderful day!

/Andreas Sandström

My first blogpost, let´s begin!

Hey all! I am Andreas Sandström and would like to welcome you to this site! This is the first blogpost that I write here and I think we can start off by explaining why I started this blog

This blog
I’ve tried many ways to document my life and I have noticed that I have never been ready to do it fully, gotten bored of it, had analytics telling me that nobody is watching/reading (motivation goes away quickly). But this time, I have decided that writing blogposts about my life and my thoughts on different matters (mostly fitness) is going to be done for one person only. So the metrics wont matter and seeing that this one person is MYSELF, I will not have to put in any thoughts on how I look to the world! But with that said, I am sharing my documentation, obviously, so it is also not only for me. But I will not have that in mind when I write and when I post anything! Just for me and myself!

Another reason for me to do this is that I, my future kids, grand kids etc etc can go back and read this! It is pretty cool to know that! So yeah, hi kids!

I will, as I said, document my life. As much as I feel like! Some post might be more “educational-based” and some might be more “today I did ….”. Not all about my life but it will, guaranteed, be about something that is related to my life. Now you know, now I know so lets just give you some info of who I am and what I do, overall.

Andreas Sandström
I am a 26 year old guy, living my life in the middle parts of Sweden, in a town called Falun! I am currently studying to become a high-school teacher in Physical education and biology! That is my main main focus right now and for another few years!

I have a love for CrossFit and EVERYTHING around it! It is the way I train, I follow a lot of the biggest crossfitters and proudly call myself a big nerd within this subject! I used to coach at a box in another town but seeing as I have not lived where I am now for long, I am currently not coaching any crossfit! But I do loooove to help others with this and with any physical activity, for that matter!

So yeah, there you have it! At least some! More about me will come, but later!

Have a great day!
/Andreas Sandström

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