Zig Ziglar is known for saying the following about goals: “What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” The same is true for fitness goals. By achieving your fitness goals, you get – for example – a well-toned body but you become healthier by achieving your fitness goals – something which is far more valuable.
To make sure that you end up achieving your fitness goals, you need to make sure that they are S.M.A.R.T. This stand for specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. In this article, we’ll go in depth about what it takes for you to set S.M.A.R.T.er goals.
Specific
Your fitness goals need to be specific. In other words, you need to precisely define what you want to achieve. Don’t just say “I want to look good”. Say “I want to lose 10kg and build lean muscle mass”. If you know what you want to achieve, it will become much easier for you to get there.
Measurable
Now that you have a clear road ahead of what idea you want to follow, find a way of measuring your progress towards getting there. Keep yourself accountable and give yourself short-term goals so that you can see progress towards your long-term goal. So, if you want to lose 10kg, give yourself a target of losing 500g per week. However, if you don’t achieve the weekly goal one week, don’t beat yourself up about this! Try again next week.
Achievable
The fitness goals that you set need to be achievable. Don’t make them so out of your reach that you don’t have any chance of getting there. For example, if you know that you’re not a morning person, don’t tell yourself that you’re going to be exercising at 5 am from Monday to Friday. You won’t end up getting out of bed on time. The worst thing, though, is that you’ll end up beating yourself up about not getting up on time, which will make you feel so bad that you won’t end up having the motivation necessary to achieve your fitness goals. So, don’t set yourself up for failure – make sure that you can achieve the goals that you set out for yourself.
Realistic
This goes hand in hand with the previous paragraph. In order to make sure that you achieve your fitness goals, you need to make sure that they are realistic. If you say that you’re going to lose 10kg, do you have the motivation necessary to want to lose the weight? Are you committed to make the necessary changes in your life that will help you realise these goals.
Time-bound
The last characteristic that you need to make sure your fitness goal has is time sensitivity. – You need to set a time frame in which you will be able to meet the goals. This is so that you can see that you’re making progress towards achieving your goal. As we said earlier in the article, don’t set an unrealistic expectation. If you do this, you’ll never achieve what you set out to do. However, if you do not reach your fitness goals in the allotted (realistic) time that you’ve set out, don’t beat yourself up about this! If you’re motivated to get to the final destination, you’ll achieve this – it may just take you a bit longer.
Setting and achieving fitness goals is not an exact science. Sometimes you may set certain goals but they need to be tweaked along the way in order for you to be able to achieve them. You need to keep pushing on so that you can create fitness goals that work for you and help you to achieve health, wellness and fitness.