If you are wanting to lose weight, improve your health, increase your strength or anything in between, the first and most important step is setting fitness goals. These goals should be clear, measurable, and realistic. Setting fitness goals is critical for your success.
Think about one of the top athletes in the world…
Michael Phelps, 5-time Olympic swimmer that won 28 Olympic medals, preaches about setting goals. His long-time coach, Bob Bowman said, “He may be the most goal oriented person on the planet.” Michael Phelps didn’t get there without setting a bunch of fitness goals. His goals pushed him and drove him to success.
It doesn’t matter how big or small your goals are. The #1 reason why people succeed is because they set fitness goals. Here you will learn how to effectively create your fitness goals and important steps to take to help you achieve and completely smash those goals!
Importance of Setting Fitness Goals
The main reason we set goals is to give us purpose and to provide direction in our life. It is a representation of where you want to see yourself in the future and what you want to accomplish.
Other reasons goals will help you succeed in your journey include:
- Gives you something to work toward. If you don’t have an end destination, you could be going in circles and never get to where you truly want to go.
- Narrows down what you want. Taking some time to think about what you want will guide you in the right direction and narrow done what you need to focus on.
- Gives you motivation. Your goals can be a key reason you continue to push yourself and work hard. A good strategy to use your goals as motivation is to post them up in your room or somewhere you will see them everyday. Seeing your goals each morning, will act as a motivator to work toward and achieve them.
- Measures progress toward success. With a firmly defined objective and goal in place, you will be able to see the steps you need to take that will successful get you across the finish line. Each step you take is one step close to the end goal.
Want to know more about goal setting? Explore my post, Goal Setting: 6 Benefits that will Lead to Success
How to Create Effective Goals
One of the best methods to create effective goals are to create SMART goals.
- Specific
- Measurable
- Action oriented
- Realistic
- Time Bound
So how can you make SMART goals?
Let’s say you are a swimmer and your goal is to swim faster. To turn that into a SMART goal, it might instead be to increase your 100 meter freestyle time by 2 seconds in the next 6 months. This is now specific, measurable with time, action-oriented, ideally realistic and time bound within 6 months.
But wait…
There is another component to creating effective goals.
In addition to creating SMART goals, Locke and Latham published, ‘A Theory of Goal Setting & Task Performance’ which takes it a step further and focuses on the whole journey of achieving a goal rather than just setting the goals. They focused on 5 principles of effective goal setting. These principles are:
1. Clarity
Make your goals specific and clear. For example, if you want to get better at running, what does that mean?
A specific and clear goal would be to increase your mile time. Rather than just saying you want to get better at running, you know have a specific goal that is more clear that just “get better at running”.
2. Challenge
Your goals should be challenging. That’s the whole point of setting goals.
Your goals need to be challenging enough to push you, however, they need to be do-able. It should not be easy to achieve nor should it be impossible. Being able to create a challenging yet realistic goal is key in setting good goals.
3. Commitment
Success will only come to those that are dedicated and committed to achieving those goals. Therefore, your success comes from with within. If you don’t commit to doing what is necessary to achieve your goals, you are going to end up right where you started.
If you are truly passionate about your goals and doing them for yourself, commitment becomes a lot easier. Success will also feel a lot greater.
4. Feedback
Evaluating your progress and getting feedback on your goals is important to keeping yourself on track and in the right direction. It’s hard to do things alone, especially challenging things. Getting an outside perspective and support will help you succeed.
Feedback is always important so see what you can do better and if your current strategy is working and moving you toward success.
5. Task Complexity
Task complexity is about how deep and how big your goals are. This factors in how much you have to do before reaching your goals.
If you goal is really complex, you may have to break your goal down into sub-goals to avoid feeling overwhelmed and more obtainable.
If you have a really big goal you want to achieve, that’s great! But it’s hard to stay motivated when success feels so far away. In order to get to the top, you need to break your goals into smaller goals. Success on your smaller goals will help you reach that big, end goal.
You need to think about the task complexity when you are creating your goals. Ask yourself “Do I need to break up my goals?” “How hard and how long will it take to reach this goal?”
Answering these questions will help you determine your task complexity and how you should break it up. Being able to achieve goals weekly is really important in staying motivated and boosting your confidence.
3 Steps to Achieving Your Goals
First off, you are the only one that can make your health and fitness goals happen. It is all about you and your determination and motivation toward this goal. How badly do you want this? How hard are you willing to work to achieve this goal? Think about those questions when you are setting your health goals.
I say this not to discourage you from setting goals, but rather to avoid any unrealistic expectations. Just because you created amazing goals, doesn’t mean you’ll achieve them without putting in any work. And that’s up to you.
With that being said, fitness goals are hard. There will be days that you might want to say, “oh, forget it”, or “I can’t do it”. Luckily, there are things you can do and think about that will help you stay on track and achieve your fitness goals.
1. See your goals every day
Write your goals down and post them somewhere in your room. You can look at them right when you get up in the morning. You can look at them when you are lacking motivation and need a reason to keep pushing.
Looking at your goal will be a reminder to you about what you are working toward. It’s a reminder that in the end, the hard days will be worth it. The harder you work, the better success will feel.
2. Create smaller goals that help to achieve the bigger goal.
Goals can be used for mini achievements as well.
As mentioned above,, bigger, more complex goals should be broken down into smaller, easier-to-achieve goals.
For example, a lot of people say their goal is weight loss. This is a big goal, and it will take a long time of consistent work. A good way to make it easier to achieve is by setting weekly goals. Some smaller weekly goals may be:
- Drink a certain number of ounces of water each day.
- Complete 5 workouts each week.
- No eating after 8pm.
- Lose 1 pound per week
Smaller goals like this are a lot easier to achieve. Having small successes will keep you motivated to continue working for those longer goals.
3. Make a plan and STICK TO IT!
Goals mean nothing unless you have a plan for achieving them.
If your goal is to improve your mobility. How are you going to do? Map out the exercises you are going to do, what stretches you want to do, how often are you going to do them. Start researching ways to improve mobility and incorporating tips from professionals.
Make a plan and STICK TO IT!
That is the best advice anyone can give you when it comes to achieving your goals. Consistency is the key to almost any goal. Small strives toward the end goal overtime will have way more success then investing 5 hours toward your goal one day and then forgetting about it for a week.
And that is it! You are ready to crust those goals! I wish you nothing but the best in your new journey and feel free to reach out if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
Leave a Reply