The following is an excerpt of an interview I did for The Elite Body, with Vince Delmonte, creator of No Nonsense Muscle Building.

Jim: Speaking of goals, can you talk a little about performance and outcome goals?
Vince: That’s a great question.  Performance and outcome goals – I guess one’s a good way to set goals and one’s a bad way to set goals.  Outcome goals are something you can’t control.  These are the wrong goals to set.
An outcome goal is saying that I want to – and I’ll clarify all this in a second – an outcome goal is saying I want to lose 100 pounds.  Well, you can’t control if you’re going to lose 100 pounds.   You can control the performance goals that are going to contribute to that outcome goal, but you can’t actually predict the outcome.
It’s kind of like a 100 meter sprinter.  He might want to run . . . an Olympic sprinter might want to run sub 10 seconds, but he can’t control the outcome of running 10 seconds.  What he can control is how hard he pumps his arms; how fast he comes out of the gate; how he accelerates at the 30 meter mark.
What I’m trying to say is that yes, you should have some sort of outcome goal — I want to lose 100 pounds, but that shouldn’t be where it stops.  You should progress your day to day focus to revolve around performance goals, things that you can control. So let’s make this practical.  For somebody who wants to lose some body fat, a good performance goal would be to wake up at 6:00 in the morning instead of 7:00, because waking up an hour earlier is going to allow your metabolism to work an extra hour in the day.  Multiple that by seven days in a week, and that’s 7 hours times 52 weeks — 7 x 50 = 350 extra hours in a year that your metabolism is going to be burning.
Focusing on things that you can control like writing out a grocery list so knowing that you’re going to put enough chicken in your grocery cart.  You’re going to get enough oatmeal.  You’re not going to put this in your grocery cart.  You’re going to make sure you get enough vegetables.  Those are things that you can control.
Writing out your day planner – I’ve got a buddy living at my place right now.  He’s a physician.  He has this insane schedule.  He works one day on; he’s on call one day; he’s off another day.  He’s asked me for all this workout advice.  I’ve been giving him workout advice.  Every time I see him, he looks the same.  I’m like, “What’s the problem here?”  I realize that he doesn’t have a schedule.  He’s focusing on the wrong thing.  I said, “What you need to do is get your planner and I need you to schedule in all the days you’re going to work out for the next month.  Let’s worry about that.”  He’s like, “Oh man, that’s what I need to do. I have to figure out what days I can even work out on.” Who cares about reps and sets until you have a plan and know when you’re going to hit the gym?  Focus on things you can control and then the outcome will take care of itself.

Jim:    That is profound.  That is really great.  I think that’s one of those common mistakes that people make.  They’re so focused on the outcome that they forget to focus on the details of it all.   That is profound knowledge. Another one – and again, these are things in the No Nonsense guide.  It really is no nonsense.  I think that’s the absolutely perfect title because in an industry where there’s a bunch of nonsense – well, the nonsense is that there’s so many different systems and programs and everything else.  I think what Vince has done with his book is really boiled it all down to the absolute core things.

If you’d like to learn more about Vince’s No Nonsense Muscle Building program, click here.