How to make SMART fitness goals
Whether you’re wanting to make movement a part of your daily lifestyle, are training for a fitness event or taking part in one of our challenges/ programmes, your goals need to inspire you to take action.
To create your own health and fitness goals, identify what you want to achieve, or an area you want to improve on, and then focus on the active steps you need to take to achieve that goal.
Using the SMART framework, you should consider five main focus areas when setting your goals to help make them more achievable. Your goals should be realistic and achievable within a certain time frame, and specific to your lifestyle and training habits.
SMART goals are:
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Timely
Be specific — Clearly define your goal
Effective goal setting can’t rely on a vague idea of what you want to achieve. You NEED to get specific.
When you have a specific goal, it’s easier to identify when you have reached it, and to plan what you need to do to get there. For example, the goal “I want to get fit” is far to vague. What do you define as fit? How will you be able to tell when you are fit? This goal doesn’t provide you with a clear path to success, and your definition of “fit” may change during the process.
Think “who, what, when, where, why, and how”.
Make your goals measurable
When you can track your progress against a benchmark, you know if you are getting closer to achieving your goals! This can help to keep you motivated and determined on your journey to achieving the said goal.
Our PB tracker is a great way of measuring your goal, for example if you goal is to squat 120kg you’re able to measure this by tracking your progress in App.
Measuring and track your goal this way not only means you will see your progress, which makes it easier to work towards, but you’ll know when you’ve achieved it, it’s very easy to get side tracked and be led astray by another goal, so this way you don’t forget about it.
Your goals need to be achievable
While your goals should challenge you, it is important that they are also realistic. For example, setting yourself the task of running a marathon with just two weeks training is not smart. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go ahead and dream big!
A good way to tackle your bigger goals is to break them down into smaller, more achievable goals that lead towards the bigger goal, for example staying on the running theme, running your first 5,10,15k, building up to half a marathon and then a full.
Your goals need to be relevant to you
You need to set goals you can realistically do the work to achieve, considering your lifestyle, resources, current fitness level and available time.
The goals you set should be relevant to your life, and appropriate taking into consideration your health and lifestyle. Think about why you want to achieve your goal. Perhaps you want to feel stronger and healthier or you’re doing it to raise money for a charity, this is a meaningful goal and, as a result, you might be more committed to working toward it.
Goals should be time-specific
Setting a deadline is so important. This allows you to work out a plan to achieve your goal by breaking it into daily actions and marking your progress by acknowledging smaller milestones, this will also keep you committed by acknowledging the smaller wins.
When you set yourself a realistic time frame, it’s easier to plan ahead and schedule the time you’ll need to dedicate towards achieving your goal, ie if you need 3 months, you can set a start date and ensure you should up for yourself and your goal on time.
If you use the App you can use it to record your daily steps, workouts and water intake. As well as personal bests (PB’s)
Another meaningful way to track your progress over time is to keep a journal, this is great to jot down the smaller goals and actions that are part of your plan to achieve your bigger goals, making it for more digestible.
Now you know how to set SMART goals, it’s time to set yours.
