What are your fitness goals for 2023?

[RebeccaFitbit]

Hey everyone - starting a new topic for 2023! 

We're only a week in 2023, so it's the perfect time to discuss what we are hoping to accomplish for the year. Feel free to update this thread as you reach milestones! 

For me: I've had some injuries that I'm working through but recently adopted a dog (see photo - our gorgeous Mimi) so hitting 10k steps a day should be a given! I'd also like to do more low-impact strengthening workouts, like barre and pilates. 

What about you all? Let me know! 

[APCastillo]

I started a little later in to the new year. My goal is to lose weight and gain muscle. I joined Planet Fitness 2.5 weeks ago. I'm averaging 5 days a week. The worst part is that the easiest time for me to hit the gym during the work week is 4 am! After speaking to a trainer, I decided to set small weight loss goals instead of setting my goal weight as my target right away.

[Baltoscott]

Oh my, @APCastillo, 4am is ambitious! I think the trainer you spoke to is giving good advice. Small short term goals help you focus on what you can do now, and the benefits compound over time. Thanks for sharing!

[RockinRach]

This what I look like now VS before idk if you can tell a difference and my hopes are to get to 130 pounds and too just keep working out even if its hard I tell myself no you gotta keep going when I feel like giving up  

 

 

[kaynelvb]

Just be careful and do try to slow down a bit.  Getting yourself laid up due to injury will not help you at all.  Try going to the gym every other day and alternating upper and lower body.  That way, although you are at the gym daily, you will only be working certain muscle groups every other day.  As to walking, continue doing that daily, but maybe try slowing down a bit.  I have long Covid, and my breathing is still not back to normal.  I hate it, but I know I have to go carefully, so I try to limit my step to 10,000 per day for now.  I often don't get there, and it is still my goal, but at the same time I try not to go over too much yet (which I tend to do in the summer, when I am gardening).  Maybe with time things will get back to normal, but I know that pacing myself is the only true answer. 

Good luck, and keep us posted!!!!!!

Kayne

[Vidd]

I'm revising my floors target - I want to see if I can do 100 miles of ascent in 2023 - so that's 52,800 floors, roughly 145 each day.

Most days I do above that, but when we go off boating, the land around is so flat that I'm lucky to get more then 20 floors done.  

We'll see!

[Heather-S]

@Vidd That’s an amazing goal! I hardly get any floors (live in a flat area). I do have a few rolling hills near my house that I walk, but I just don’t get much on a daily basis unless I purposely seek out hills. 

Where do you get your floors? Hiking around your house?

[Vidd]

@Heather-S Haha! hiking around my house would be hard work, although I reckon from the road to our upper floor is nearly 20 feet of climbing.

We live in Shropshire, right among the hills.  We're at 700 feet and the hills go up to 1700, which I can get to in just over an hour.  My dog and I go out three times a day, and he loves charging up the hills.  I go at a steadier pace.  As I've cut down on steps this year (I had to decide when to stop trying to beat the previous year's total, as it was going to take too much our of every day to do that) then I thought that taking a different angle on my walking would make a good challenge.  There's plenty of choice about which hilly route to take, so Walter and I still get plenty of variety.

[Heather-S]

@Vidd That sounds really lovely. I bet your dog has an amazing time! And I'm sure your daily steps are still excellent!

[t.parker]

@Vidd Shropshire is a beautiful county (and more hilly than mine)👍 I live now in Hampshire so there are some hills, too. Before, I lived in west Surrey near Thames and the area was flat as a pancake (or rather crepe) so it was more than difficult to get a decent elevation gain. After moving to Hampshire, my weekly elevation gain reaches 500m-1000m (trail running) so finally, I included proper hill sprints and repeats training (with steep sprints and long inclined intervals). My weekly elevation goal is now 750m (for running only). The more hilly the better! 😀

[Heather-S]

@t.parker It's very flat here in Florida, which is actually the flattest state in the US - the highest point being only 345 feet above sea level. The rolling hills by my house are only about 276 feet. Here is the elevation graph for my regular walk. This 45 minute walk usually earns me around 28-32 floors, give or take. I would love to try to earn some more floor badges, but with this being my only access to hills, it would take significant time. My goal one day this spring is to do 200 floors in a day. I've calculated that it will take roughly 4-5 hours to complete. 

 

[Baltoscott]

That’s a worthy switch in emphasis @Vidd  Floors are still my favorite Fitbit metric. I always feel challenged by taking hilly bike rides.

[t.parker]

@Heather-S most of my elevation gain I get due to hill repeats. The place I work is flat but there is a hill about 2 miles from my office which gives me 50m of gain on a 500m distance so I run it back and forth as the hill repeats training (6 to 8 times). This gives me 300m-400m elevation gain in one workout (within an hour) and very good conditioning for hills. Not sure about the floors. I don't pay attention to it, my Sense 2 greatly overestimates floors. I'm not sure why my Sense 2 adds plenty of floors. Elevation gain from my runs seems to be rather correct but things like walking 3 floors upstairs in the car park added 19 floors by Fitbit. But looking at some other data, I built a regular pattern (last 4 weeks):

The "lonely" large spike is 202 floors (an exception, a very hilly half-marathon). When not racing, hill repeats/sprints on Thursdays give me 100 to 150 floors and a long run on Saturday usually gives 100+ floors including the remainder of the day. Even when it's flat it may be achievable to get decent elevation gain:

The only problem is that it may get a bit repetitive, although at 5 or 6 sets the brain shuts down and everything works on autopilot 🙂 For this hill, I cycle first compressing the time of workout (I'm limited by lunchtime).

My Saturday long runs are all about elevation and distance (although, I try to balance flat and hilly parts). I design my routes knowing how much elevation gain I will get out of them. So two days can give me nearly 800m and other days are "peanuts" but heading towards 1000m. Hence, my goal is 750m, something achievable (used to be 500m).

I don't think more elevation gain (or more often) is achievable for me because of other sports (swimming after a hard run is asking for trouble) so I set my goals to be realistic.

[Vidd]

Here's what my part of Shropshire looks like.  These two pictures were taken from Haddon Hill, which is at the top of the golf course.  Our house is 700 feet above sea level, and the GC goes up to 1200 feet.  I can reach where I took the picture from (about 1300 feet) in about 35 minutes' walking.  In the distance you can see two hilly areas.  On the left is Caer Caradoc, about 1500 feet high, and behind that the wonderful ridge walk over Hope Bowdler Hill and Willstone Hill.  They are a bit further away, but an afternoon's walk will include them both, though not usually right over the very top of Caradoc, which I reserve for special days!  To get my target of 100 miles elevation in the year, I need to average 145 floors per day (1450 feet).  If I plan things right I can get 200 floors or more in a day in about 4.5 to 5 hours' walking.

This picture below shows some other hills which I can incorporate on the return from Haddon Hill.

[t.parker]

@Vidd my hills are nowhere near that impressive 🙂 I would need to drive first either to South Downs or North Downs which is at least 45min drive and I have maybe an hour a day, sometimes two hours to use for activity so need to squeeze my goals into very short time frame 😁 Maybe when I'm retired I will have more time (or not 🤣).

If you use Strava you may link account with summitbag.com to "collect" all the peaks you climb 🙂 (it mostly covers UK area).

[Vidd]

Thanks, @t.parker: I use an Omron pedometer for steps and an iPhone for floors.

Yes, I'm lucky with so many good sized hills on my doorstep, and to be retired too, although I still seem to fill every day with things.  I used to live and work in Berkshire - nothing to go up there of any note - so my floor count would have been pretty low then.

[Grlbiker]

Hello,  I;m just trying to get more active and fit and hopefully lose some weight along the way, my goals are to eat better, as in eat / prepare more made at home from scratch meals in lieu of processed or ready to eat foods. to exercise at least 3 days a week. But my biggest goal is to get out of debt; I recently downloaded a budget app that supposed to help me track and target expenses so I can pay off and live debt or credit card free; sounds good right, I hope I can stick with it. feel free to send me a friend request. I have no friends on here 😞  

[t.parker]

@Vidd I managed to get 164 floors today by 11:30am (Fitbit says 404 but the weather affected elevation gain, my run shows almost 1000m el. gain on Fitbit which isn't possible at all here so won't use data from this source). It took me 2 hours and 47 minutes of moving (excluding stops to take some photos) on 30.8km distance. It also required me to take a day off 😆 So I dropped off my wife to her work early morning, parked my car and went running. This time, I went towards North Downs (Newbury, Thatcham) but it was way too muddy after last night rain. Moreover, while running through some farm lands I wasn't sure anymore whether it was mud or... well... a product of metabolism that I was stepping on, it didn't matter anymore 🤣 and then it started hailing. So this run gave me 30k+ steps and 164 floors and plenty of new beautiful views (I ran this trail first time so it was all new but it had some sketchy bits so the trail needs more refining). But it isn't something I would do every day (no time and it is really draining). And definitely, I won't try to reach 200 floors today 🤣

[Baltoscott]

All this talk of floors caused me to look at my original 2023 goal at the beginning of this tread. That was to get a 20 mile ride in on my unicycle. I accomplished that on February 18. 3hrs 15mim.  I wisely did it on a rail trail which is pretty flat for around here so I only had about  20 floors for the trip. As a side note I usually have my old CH2 in my pocket to count floors and it does a fairly good job. 

 

[Noah526]

Well, I don't have many fitness goals for 2023. Probably the only goal is to walk more than 15 thousand steps a day.

[SunsetRunner]

Name : Gregory Seiders

Hitting 60 years young in April so my main goal is to try and maintain my fitness, just try and be a lot more consistent and keep myself motivated to get out there every day