Define Your Goals or Languish in Mediocrity
Clearly defining your goals, along with how you measure progress and success, is one of the most important yet frequently overlooked steps when starting a plan to improve your health and fitness. It is all too common for clients to overlook the many ways in which their health and fitness are improving because they do not have clearly defined goals, and the ways in which they measure progress blind them to the success of their efforts.
Most people use the scale as their sole marker of progress because they want to “lose weight” in an effort to “be healthier”. The quotation marks are intended to highlight the frequency with which personal trainers hear these ill-defined goals.
Some clients are truly motivated by a desire to change their health for the better, and they often are looking to improve certain health markers or manage certain conditions as designated by their primary care physician. For these clients, progress or success is easy to measure because they have a clearly delineated outcome they want to achieve with relevant methods to measure progress.
Many clients, however, are motivated by a desire to “look better” or “lose weight” without having a clear definition of what success or progress looks like, and they will cease their efforts if their undefined expectation of progress is not met or if they have internalized an unrealistic timeline for results.
These nebulous goals frequently cause frustration, and clients don’t know whether their efforts or fruitful or futile. SMART goal setting defines the desired outcome, sets a path to measure progress, and achieves it through concrete, actionable tasks.
SMART is an acronym that stands for the following:
Specific - What will be accomplished? What actions will you take?
Measurable - What data will be used to measure progress toward the goal?
Achievable - Is the goal doable? Do you have the necessary skills and resources?
Relevant - How does this goal align with broader goals? Why is the result important?
Time-Bound - What is the time frame for accomplishing the goal? Is this time frame practical?
In creating a SMART goal, you can pause and reflect on what it is you truly desire to accomplish. This self-reflection may also lead to deeper insights regarding the emotional motivation of your goal. Why do you want to do this? There is no right or wrong answer to this question. There is only understanding and prioritization by way of honest introspection.
Clearly defining your goals, methods of tracking and measuring progress, and keeping yourself honest about the intrinsic motivation behind the goal will set you apart from the millions of other people who approach improving their fitness without a plan. This one simple trick - having a plan, understanding it, and sticking to it - will lead you to the places you want to go.