I often get asked a question relating to setting goals and achieving them so I am going to focus a little on this subject as it pertains to all aspects of life not just swimming. It is important to set goals for yourself in all areas so that as a person you are always improving and moving forward. The common cause for failure is over setting a goal and becoming disillusioned along the way as it is too hard. Let’s take for instance someone who wants to lose 10kg in weight by Christmas. The first thing they need to ask themselves is how am I going to achieve this? The answer could be by eliminating high energy foods such as chips, chocolate and soft drink from my diet and by increasing my exercise by walking 30 minutes a day, with an aim to losing 1kg over 2 weeks. Once this first goal has been achieved they then need to set the next goal to challenge them self further. This could be increasing the intensity of the exercise to involve short bursts of running while on the walk and decreasing the size of the meal portion to 80%.