Now goal setting is never an easy task, we often try and set goals too large of goals that are dictated by social media conformity rather than something that we actually personally desire.
The whole point of this blog is to help you all ‘not suck’ at setting fitness goals as we go forward with your training.
One of the most effective ways to set a fitness related goal or a goal outside of the gym is to use the SMART principle. The SMART principle stands for Specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound.
BE SPECIFIC!!
“I want to lose weight” or “I want to get stronger” or “I want to get fitter”
These are terrible goals, they’re super vague and relatively useless when on their own!
You need to be super specific when setting your fitness goals. If weight loss is your overall goal, how much do you want to lose? What sort of time scale do we have to lose it?. If your goal is to get stronger, by how much are we talking? 100kg bench, 1.5x bodyweight squat?. If you want to get fitter, excellent. What do you class as fitter? Going for a dog walk without needing a rest halfway or running a 10k?
MEASURABILITY!!
All our fitness goals need to be measurable for us to see any realistic progress. Similar to the goal above “I want to lose weight” is a poor way to set a fitness related goal, your goal needs to have a trackable component to it. For example; I want to lose 2kg in the next 30-days. Another example; I want to run 5k without walking.
YOUR GOALS NEED TO BE ATTAINABLE!!
All of you should set yourself a goal that you can actually achieve. This achievement allows us to stick to our program, it reinforces our mindset to a healthier change. Wanting to lose 10kgs in a month is not an attainable goal, however if we lose 0.5-1kg a week over the same 4 week period our goal becomes so much more attainable over the long term.
MAKE THEM RELEVANT!!
Your goals need to be personal to you, they need to fit your needs, interests and your abilities. Theres no point in setting yourself a goal of running a marathon if you can’t run 5k yet. However engaging yourself into a program that will build you a base of aerobic endurance and weight training to help you get stronger and recover quicker will help you on this path.
TIME!!
Your fitness goals need to have a timeline with a distinct end. These can either be a long term goal or a short term goal and having a timeline should in theory help you stay on track. For example your short term goal may be to run once a week & go to the gym twice a week for the next month. Once you’ve hit this target you can build to 2/week of each and you know you’ll be well on your way to your long term weight loss goal six months down the line.
Have a think guys, hopefully I’ve helped somewhat with your goal making decisions. Follow the SMART principle and you’ll see success I promise. Remember its the process, not just the end results.
The Goal is to keep the goal, the goal (Dan John).
Rob.