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Ready to Set Fitness Goals? Quick Fit’s Cassy Vieth Tells You How!
December 16, 2021 Leave a Comment
It’s so common that it’s a cliche. At the start of a new year, many of us evaluate our physical wellness and decide we want to commit to better health. But how do we truly adopt a mindset that prioritizes our overall wellness as a permanent commitment?
The 2022 season of Quick Fit With Cassy is here to help. Host Cassy Vieth, a professional fitness instructor from Wisconsin, shares tips for setting exercise goals — and keeping them.
Watch Quick Fit With Cassy at pbswisconsin.org/quickfit and on the PBS App on your Roku, other streaming devices, phones, tablets and Smart TVs! Or search “Quick Fit With Cassy” on YouTube and watch it there.
PBS Wisconsin: How do you approach helping people set fitness goals?
Cassy Vieth: People often express to me some dissatisfaction in their current health. Usually it’s that something hurts or “It sucks getting old.” I then try to determine if they truly want to make a change. First, they need to decide if it is important to make changes. Do they believe there is an advantage to making a change, such as losing weight, reducing pain, or looking and feeling better? On the other hand, do they have a concern that if they don’t make a change, they will feel worse?
Secondly, do they actually believe a change will work, or will they just repeat the mantra “getting old stinks”? And this is where my role comes in to re-educate them about movement, exercises and visualizing themselves. I want to help them make changes and experience real results.
It’s my job to make their fitness experience: enjoyable, easy, effective and educational. It’s their job to show up consistently. I like to remind people that keeping promises to themselves is as important as keeping promises to others. It creates more self-respect, and improves their outcomes as well as their expectation of a positive outcome. This is why I often end my videos with the encouragement to “make plans to take tomorrow’s class right now.”
PBS Wisconsin: Once people are committed to making lifelong changes, how do you help them make progress?
Vieth: People set themselves up for success when they make SMART goals: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. It needs to be a specific, clearly defined goal that you can measure. Not just “get more fit,” but “get strong enough to walk two miles a day.”
The goal must be attainable, challenging but achievable, and it must be realistic to your life, schedule and abilities. Not everyone is meant to play for the NFL, nor do they want to, and that is key.
Lastly, the goal must be tracked over a specific time frame with frequent check-ins along the way to mark progress and keep you encouraged, such as three months overall with weekly check-ins. Open-ended goals are not goals, they are wishes.
PBS Wisconsin: How do you encourage people when they experience setbacks?
Vieth: A setback is just a moment. Let’s say you were on a diet and you had cake at a party. That’s just that moment. It doesn’t mean it has to be for the rest of the day. It doesn’t mean it has to be the rest of the week. You just get right back on track. Setbacks are perfectly normal, but it doesn’t have to define your outcome.
Ultimately we are accountable to ourselves, and I think our own self-image is reflected on how honest we are with ourselves. If you told somebody you were going to have something done, because it’s somebody else, you don’t want to let them down. But for some reason we don’t do the same with ourselves. When we are untrustworthy or unreliable to our own selves, it makes it very hard to create goals because you can’t actually visualize yourself completing them. Do not give yourself excuses that you know you wouldn’t put up with from somebody else.
PBS Wisconsin: Can you talk about the benefits of exercises like Quick Fit, and how anyone at any fitness level can benefit from improved balance and flexibility?
Vieth: The older crowd is a lot easier to convince that they need to stretch because they frankly don’t want to go out and do things like intense aerobics or bodybuilding. But I’ve taught high schoolers and college kids in the chair class and when they’re done, they’re amazed at how much better they feel. Young people are already experiencing the negative effects of sitting too much. They’re also engaged in a lot of sports, and tight muscles are weak muscles because they do not allow full range of motion in the joints, which would prevent peak performance. Quick Fit helps you continue doing things with fewer injuries, perform better at every stage and longer into your life.
PBS Wisconsin: What do you hope people take away from Quick Fit?
Vieth: The biggest takeaway I want people to have is value for their time. And that they have hope for their future, that they feel like they have control over how they age and can continue doing the things they love. For example, I’m really looking forward to seeing people at the upcoming Garden & Landscape Expo, and I want to make sure that they have the best gardening season yet because when they take time to stretch they won’t be nearly so sore and will recover quicker.
But the most important aspect to a successful fitness program is consistency, and the best strategy for being consistent is planning ahead. So decide today on tomorrow’s workout and stick to it.
Cassy Vieth is an NASM Certified Personal Trainer, AFAA Group Fitness Instructor and NASM Corrective Exercise Specialist.
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