24. The Real Reason Your Fitness Goals Fail (And How to Fix It for Good)

In this solo episode of Extend, I'm breaking down the science behind sustainable fitness progress and goal-setting so you can finally make those health resolutions stick. From understanding your baseline fitness level with key assessments to the power of setting small, realistic goals, I'm guiding you step-by-step through the tools that build long-term consistency. We'll talk about everything from DEXA scans for precise body composition analysis to why grip strength and lower body power are vital indicators of longevity. I also share actionable strategies to keep you motivated, avoid plateaus, and make progress checks work for you—not against you. Whether you're starting fresh or trying to push past a plateau, you'll walk away with a personalized blueprint for success. Ready to upgrade your fitness journey? Tune in for proven insights you can start applying today! I Also Discuss: (00:06) Testing Fitness Progress and Goals (03:50) Measuring and Improving Physical Fitness (10:17) Comprehensive Strength and Fitness Testing (22:00) Motivating Fitness Testing and Goal Setting Resources mentioned: PDF - Strength, Mobility, and Cardiorespiratory Fitness Assessment https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mYQxP9aNL3Spj8tImpApOxxu9vl7sQs2/view?usp=sharing Learn more about Dr. Shah: Website: https://www.drshah.com/ Clinic: https://www.next-health.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/darshanshahmd/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Welcome to Extend with me, Dr. Darshan Shah, a podcast dedicated to cutting-edge science, research, tools, and protocols designed to help you extend your health span. Having become one of the youngest doctors in the country at the age of 21, and trained and board-certified at the Mayo Clinic, I've accumulated three decades of practice as a board-certified surgeon and longevity expert. Over that time, I've discovered that a mere 20% of health knowledge yields 80% of the results when it comes to your health span. We're living in a new era where we are creating a new healthcare system, no longer focused on disease management, but achieving optimal health and vitality. Join me as I interview world-renowned experts, offering you a step-by-step guide to proactively avoid disease, and most importantly, extend your health span.

• 0:49Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Now that it's a new year, I'm sure a lot of you have renewed your commitment to fitness, and many of you are hitting the gym hard. Congrats to you. Before I congratulate you too much, however, I know that about 80% of you, according to some studies, won't be in the gym too much longer, unfortunately. So what can we do to make sure this habit sticks? Well, one thing that I have found to be incredibly helpful is to understand where you currently stand in relationship to the population for your current level of fitness, and to set small, achievable incremental goals for each quarter of this year. So that's what I'm going to talk about today, and how you could do that for yourself. I cannot tell you how helpful this has been for my patients who not only stick to their gym routines for the long term,

• 1:33Dr. Darshan Shah?

  but actually way exceed their goals for the year. When you understand where you are and where you should be, and then you follow that data, there is a much lower chance of you falling off the wagon. The old adage of "you cannot change what you don't measure" also applies. Making progress is a huge motivator. But how do you know that you're moving forward unless you're actively making some measurements and checking your numbers? So in today's Solo Toad, I'm going to walk you through the test that I use for my patients when they start their journey with me. The tests we use have a ton of established science and standards that are used in large research studies. So we're confident that they are a good measure. In general, for everyone to use at least once a year. But I actually like to have my patients do the full evaluation once a quarter.

• 2:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So again, that we can track progress, which is also another big motivator. It's important to note that what I have found in my own practice is that all of my patients are very different, especially at when and at what rate they see changes in their actual fitness goals. Some people see slow, steady progress throughout the year, while others see little change or none until about month six, and then they start accelerating. While others see a ton of progress initially, and then they plateau. All of this is normal, and it's important not to get discouraged. Plateaus are especially common. You can just ask any bodybuilder or marathon enthusiast. There are techniques to push through all of the plateaus, and we'll discuss this in future episodes. Also, you can check out my episode with Andy Galpin, where we talk extensively about this.

• 3:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So in general, I divide my assessments up into four broad categories. Number one, body composition, two, strength, third, mobility, and finally, number four, cardio respiratory fitness. So let's dive into each one of these in some detail. First, I'm going to talk about body composition. I've said in previous episodes that in general, I consider a weight or even body mass index not a measure that I really like to follow with my patients. Instead, we are really big on following skeletal muscle mass, visceral fat mass, and total fat mass. So how do you get these measurements? Well, these measures are best obtained by getting a scan called a DEXA scan. This is a quick, very low radiation scan of your body that gives you very accurately these numbers,

• 3:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  and also you get your bone density. We'll soon do an entire episode of the DEXA scan. But for now, I would say it is important to get one and then do some research or talk to people doing the scan about your numbers and what they mean. They can tell you where you are in relationship to a healthy population of your age and demographic, and give you directionally where you want to head. Obviously, you want to increase your skeletal muscle mass so that it is above average for your age, and decrease your total fat mass to a healthy level. Of equal importance is to get rid of visceral fat. This is the dangerous fat that invades your organs like your liver and your pancreas and causes massive amounts of inflammation and leads to a higher risk of metabolic disease, heart disease, and even cancer.

• 4:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So, to get a DEXA scan, simply Google "DEXA scan" near me. There are several websites like Fitness City, BodySpec, and even dexascan.com that'll point you in the right direction. Should cost you no more than fifty to a hundred dollars. A DEXA scan is a must for any person who is serious about their health as your body composition is a critical indicator of your risk for disease, your health span, and even your longevity. I also have my patients purchase a bioimpotence scale, as we talked about in the episode called "Becoming the Boss of Your Biology." This special scale passes a faint electrical current through your body to get you a reading of your fat mass and your skeletal muscle mass. Although there are many out there in the market, I actually have found that the Renfro

• 5:13Dr. Darshan Shah?

  scale is very good at coming close to the DEXA scan measurements and is good at tracking directionally which way your numbers are heading. It's also one of the lowest cost scales on Amazon, right around twenty-five dollars. It's important to do the measurement first thing in the morning at around the same time to get some consistency in your levels. I personally encourage my patients to measure daily, or at least once a week, to get some good data about how progress is being made. Let's move on to the next category of assessment that we like to do, and this is getting some objective measurements of strength. Your strength, your muscular strength, is a critical biomarker of longevity. The strength of your muscles contributes to metabolism, your bone health, your mobility, and is also a direct predictor of your longevity, also of your long-term brain health, and

• 5:58Dr. Darshan Shah?

  finally also of your health span as well. So there are five measures that I like to look at: grip strength, leg strength, upper body strength, core strength, and lower body strength. On the show notes to this episode, I will have a guide that you can download, a PDF, that has links to videos on how to do these tests properly, how you should look at your numbers, and also a place to record your numbers every quarter. I highly recommend printing out the guide and forwarding it by email to your trainer. Then meet your trainer at the gym and do all of the tests. Together. This will align both of you on what the goals are and they can help make sure that you do the test properly and don't hurt yourself. Let's talk about grip strength first.

• 6:39Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To do the grip strength, you're going to need to buy a grip strength meter. That's about $20 on Amazon. The guide attached to this episode in the show notes has the link to the one that I like to use. Grip strength is a very good proxy of your overall upper body strength and overall health, believe it or not. Of note, training just your grip is not the way to improve this metric. So buying a squeezing device is probably not the best use of your time. Instead, you want to train with exercises that make you pull, carry, or hang, like pull-ups or former carries. When you measure your grip strength with a meter, I would take the best of three tries on your stronger arm. Then you can compare your results to readily available charts that will tell you where you should be in a percentile of the population. I have my patients aim for

• 7:24Dr. Darshan Shah?

  the 75th percentile or above. If you're in the 50th percentile or below, it's very important to add additional full-body strength sets to your weekly routine. We're going to talk more about developing a strength training routine in a near episode. For quick reference, a 40-year-old man should be able to do about 47 kilograms of pressure and a 40-year-old woman would do about 28 kilograms of pressure as a baseline. Next, I want to test your explosive lower body strength with a standing long jump. Again, three times and take the best results out of the three and compare it to the chart provided in the manual linked in the show notes. For reference, the same 40-year-old man should do about a seven-foot jump and a woman should do about a six-foot jump. Jumping is a great measure of leg strength because it utilizes your entire lower body

• 8:08Dr. Darshan Shah?

  musculature. Jumping is a reflection of functional strength, mobility, and overall health. The balance, coordination, and mobility needed to jump contributes to less falls and better mobility well into your older ages. If jumping is something that you're falling into low or below average range for, training with box jumps with a trainer is an excellent way to regain this ability. Next, we want to check your leg strength with the air squat test. You do this by doing the most air squats you can in 60 seconds using A good form. I've linked the video to a good form, or you can just ask your trainer to observe you and confirm you're doing a good squat. Men in their 40s should aim for about 50 air squats in a minute, and women should aim for about 40.

• 8:51Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Not only is the air squat a foundational movement that strengthens your lower body and core, maintaining the ability to air squats enhances long-term functional mobility. Who does not want to be able to reach the ground and pick up a pet or a grandchild as we age? Next, we move up to the core by checking core strength. We do this by looking at your plank time. This is a very simple test to check your core strength. Core strength is an essential marker of your longevity because it serves as the foundation for virtually all physical movements and overall well-being. Having a weak core can lead to back pain, decrease overall mobility, a higher risk of falling, and not to mention, poor posture and overall performance.

• 9:35Dr. Darshan Shah?

  An average male or female should be able to hold a plank for two minutes, and we should all aim for at least four minutes that we can hold the plank. Finally, upper body strength is easily tested by doing push-ups. This test involves doing the most push-ups you can in 60 seconds. Men in their 40s should aim for more than 20 push-ups, and women should aim for 10 or more. Upper body strength is obviously one of the most important aspects of overall body strength. So it's critical to continually train the upper body musculature, including the chest, shoulders, arms, and back, as a foundational part of your workout routine. These five strength tests are graded from beginner to novice, intermediate, advanced, and elite. No matter what level you start at at the beginning of the year,

• 10:19Dr. Darshan Shah?

  you should aim to get one level higher by the end of the year, or even go past that. A well-crafted whole-body strength training protocol should be able to achieve this in only five to 10 sets a week per muscle group. If you think about it, that is really not a lot of work for tremendous benefits. Next, we move on to testing your mobility. This is the most overlooked aspect of training when we first start a traditional gym routine using weights or machines. When I do mobility testing on my patients, many are often very surprised at their lack of mobility because they never really noticed when they started losing it. Understanding where you stand at the current moment and then taking proactive steps to regain mobility is not only an important part of your health,

• 11:02Dr. Darshan Shah?

  it's essential for extending your health span. A lack of mobility leads to all of the ravages of aging, frailty, falls, bone loss, or osteoporosis, and even heart attacks and cognitive impairment, all stem from losing mobility as we age. The best test of mobility that I have found is the app created by my podcast guests Juliette and Kelly Starrettz. Their app, called Virtual Mobility Coach, will coach you through a 15-minute mobility testing protocol that will give you a fairly accurate picture of your ability to move key joints versus your peers. It gives you a 1 to 5 score for your trunk, shoulders, hips, and ankles. We will go into mobility in great detail in the episode with the Starrettz, which will happen in a couple of weeks on the show.

• 11:46Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So make sure to tune into that episode and get your mobility test done before then. Knowledge is power when getting your mobility back. So having this key data can help you understand where you need to start working so that you can get your range of motion back. Their app also gives you a ton of exercises to regain mobility over time, and your goal should be to get all fives with a targeted training program. Lastly, we test cardiovascular fitness. Cardiovascular fitness, which has a few markers that you may have heard of, like resting heart rate and VO2 max, is the strongest predictor of health span and lifespan. In fact, a massive 2018 study done in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed very clearly that a person considered

• 12:31Dr. Darshan Shah?

  low cardiovascular fitness by VO2 max versus high cardiovascular fitness has a four times greater chance of dying and early death, which is much higher than smoking, diabetes, and high blood pressure combined. There are many aspects of cardio fitness that we assess that gives us a total picture of where you stand from this standpoint. The first of these tests is to get an indication of your overall level of activity. And this is a marker that most of us have been tracking and probably don't even know. It's the number of steps that you take per day. And we talked about this on last week's solo code. This test can not only tell us how much time you spend sedentary, which is directly correlated to a higher risk of chronic disease, but also is very correlated to your lifespan.

• 13:15Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Many of us track this metric on our wearable device, but the number is also automatically tracked on your smartphone in the health app. Since most of us have our smartphone on us all the time, it gives us a pretty good idea on how much time you spend walking daily globally. The average person around the world takes about 5,000 steps a day. But the United States number is actually much lower, at only 3,000 to 4,000 steps a day. Our goal should be a monthly average of 8,000 steps a day. And if you're doing less, it's time to start incorporating walks throughout your day with more regularity to counteract the negative effects of sedentary behavior. Secondly, we want to know your resting heart rate. Resting heart rate is a key indicator of overall cardiovascular health and fitness. It reflects the number of times your heart beats per minute while at rest,

• 14:00Dr. Darshan Shah?

  providing an insight into how efficiently your heart is functioning. A lower resting heart rate typically indicates a stronger, more efficient heart, which requires fewer beats to pump blood throughout the body. This efficiency is often a sign of good physical fitness and a lower risk of heart disease. Monitoring resting heart rate can help us detect early signs of potential health issues, such as high blood pressure or even overtraining in athletes, making it a simple yet powerful tool for maintaining long-term heart health. Your smart watch or ring should be tracking this. Otherwise, you can measure this pretty simply by feeling your pulse and measuring the amount of beats in one minute. This is best measured in the morning time. A good resting heart rate that we should all aim for is under 60 beats per minute.

• 14:43Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Next, we want to test your sprint speed. This is a measure of anaerobic capacity, which indicates how well your body is able to utilize stored energy for fuel. To perform the test, start in a standing position with your feet shoulder width apart. When the timer starts, sprint as fast as you can for 40 yards. Your time should be recorded in seconds. Men want to run this in about six to 6.5 seconds and women in about 6.5 to 7 seconds. If you are over these times, then consider adding some anaerobic training exercises, like a sprint interval training routine to your weekly exercise plan. Many of us don't even remember the last time we broke out into a sprint.

• 15:23Dr. Darshan Shah?

  So regaining the ability to sprint and doing it at a fast time is also critical. Third, we want to indirectly measure your VO2 max, which is the maximum amount of oxygen your body can use during intense exercise, which shows you how fit and how strong your heart, lungs, and muscles are. Think of it as your body's engine size for endurance. It determines how far and how fast you can go before you get tired. VO2 max is directly correlated to all risks of health and also all cause mortality, and it's one of the best indicators of longevity that we have. The Cooper 12-minute run is widely recognized as a simple yet effective measure of cardiovascular fitness and endurance. It was developed by Dr. Kenneth Cooper in the 1960s, and it evaluated aerobic capacity.

• 16:09Dr. Darshan Shah?

  To perform the test, run for 12 minutes and see how far you've traveled. This can be done outdoors on a flat road or on a treadmill set to a one incline. You want to measure how far you were able to run in that time period. Men should aim for about 2,000 meters and women should aim for about slightly less. Again, the PDF in the show notes will give you the ratings for how you did on this test, so you can set a goal for improvement over the year. Last but not least, I love the three-minute burpee test. The three-minute burpee test is an intense and highly effective way to assess overall fitness, combining cardiovascular endurance, strength, and muscular endurance into a single challenging exercise test. This test measures how many burpees you perform in three minutes,

• 16:53Dr. Darshan Shah?

  pushing your body to its absolute max. It's an excellent indicator of aerobic capacity and muscular stamina as burpees engage multiple muscle groups and require significant amounts of energy expenditure. Have your trainer start and stop the stopwatch for you while you do the test, and have them count for you as well. Men should aim for at least 60 burpees and women for 50. However, athletic and Well-trained men and women can usually get to 70 or more. And there you have it, a fully well-rounded assessment of your fitness. So you can assess where you stand at this moment and set your goals for the year. If that doesn't keep a goal-oriented individual motivated, here is one fact that will. Did you know that individuals who begin a training program with testing and goal settings

• 17:37Dr. Darshan Shah?

  that focus on achieving new levels of fitness or personal records called PRs, are much more likely to stick to a program and actually achieve those PR goals and at much higher levels of fitness? So commit to a DEXA scan, a new scale, and an hour with a trainer to take the fitness assessment detailed in the PDF show notes. And I can almost guarantee you a more successful, maybe even the most successful year of training in this year of your life. Thank you for listening to the Extend Podcast. And if you found this useful, pass this episode or the PDF along to a few friends who also are going to need to stick to their gym routines this year. Thank you.

• 18:17Dr. Darshan Shah?

  Thank you so much for listening to the podcast today. Please remember to subscribe if you liked this episode and give us a good review and share a link with your friends. It really helps to support all of our efforts. I also want to remind you that the information shared on this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Please consult with your healthcare provider or physician before making any decisions or taking any action based on what you hear today, especially if you have any underlying health conditions or on any medications. Your doctor knows your personal health situation the best and it's always important to seek their guidance.