Fitness Goals: Your Key To Success

The Importance of Setting Fitness Goals To Obtain The Body You Want

Why you need goals

Imagine you are going to embark on a road trip; you are motivated, excited, and eager to get going.  You jump in the car, pull out of the garage, and start driving. You drive and drive for hours and when you finally stop for gas, you are not quite sure where you are, but you know it’s not where you intended to be.  

See, the problem is you forgot your phone and have no GPS.  You forgot a map, and your car is so old, you don’t even have a compass to tell you which direction you’re heading.  You know where you want to be, but you have absolutely no plan on how to get there. 

Fitness aspirations are nothing short of a journey the same as any actual trip.  Had you remembered your phone, your GPS would have told you to first turn left on street A, then street B, which would lead to interstate C.  Now you know where you want to be, and you know how you are going to get there.  

When you are talking about your personal fitness journey, goals are your GPS, and without them you will aimlessly drive, never getting closer to where you want to be.   Every minute you spend dedicated to your fitness goals needs to be a minute that is getting you closer to where you want to be; there is no time to roam the gym aimlessly. 

 According to research by the University of Scranton, a staggering 92% of New Years goals go unaccomplished.  75% of Americans set a goal revolving around getting in shape.  That means there are a lot of fitness goals out there not being accomplished.  A huge part of that is because people are not setting realistic yet challenging goals that will help them achieve their ultimate goal of leading a healthier life and, of course, looking better.

The truth is I have set a New Year’s goal centered around fitness for as many years as I can remember.  Want to know what my number one goal has been since, like birth? Get a six pack. Probably not an uncommon one, but it sucks; it sucks for a lot of reasons, and I will go into those in a minute.  

What usually ends up happening is I go at it like a bat out of hell, full steam ahead… for about 4 weeks.  Results come in rapidly, 5 days a week in the gym, clean-eating 6 days a week, life is good.  

Then February rolls around, and at Thursday night poker, I have some drinks. After, I stop at McDonald’s on the way home, starving because my calories  are ridiculously low, and I have been doing a hybrid bodybuilding, crossfit, boxing, and marathon training routine.  So my cheat day, which should have been Saturday started Thursday, and hey, since Thursday was bad, what’s the point of making Friday good? Saturday rolls around, and well, I deserve this for my week of hard work, so I have my regularly scheduled cheat day.  Of course, I over-bought junk food so now I have to eat that on Sunday too. Monday I feel like shit so maybe I skip the gym andddd that’s the end of that.

Back to mediocre workouts at best and a diet that consists of about 60% cheat meals with a side of shame followed by a few days of starvation.  Not healthy at all but that was the cycle I was trapped in for years. 

If I may be so bold, this probably isn’t your first go around at getting fit and probably not the first time you have had a similar failure story.  Getting a six pack is not a goal, it’s an end result.  

I didn’t know what to do or how to do it.  I couldn’t measure my progress, and my only method was to drastically cut my calories and do an ass load of cardio.  Finally, I broke out of my cycle of insanity and tried something different. 

Your failures are not all for nothing.  I learned that cutting calories to an extreme was not a sustainable method, and I should instead have a diet that is full of high quality foods that keep me well-nourished.  I learned that trying every cardio method under the sun was burning me out and consuming too many hours of my life so I focused on strength training while mixing in high intensity circuit cardio. 

If your goal is to lose weight every year (by the way, this also sucks as a goal), and you wake up for a few weeks at 5 AM to run and eat spinach for lunch just to end up quitting a few weeks later, then stop being insane and adjust your approach.  You failed doing this but learn from it. You should learn that you aren’t Rocky and you hate running at 5AM and don’t like a rabbit diets. CHANGE your approach. That change starts with setting real goals.

Set goals that challenge you yet are attainable. There is nothing more motivating than accomplishing your goals.  The more of these small milestone goals that you accomplish, the better you will feel and the more likely you will be to stick with it.

How to Properly Set Goals

So you want to get in shape, look better, perform better.  Good. Now you need to set some goals to get there, but how and what is a good goal? A good goal that will help you progress falls in the sweet spot between not too easy and not too challenging that it’s not attainable.  Let’s look at a few characteristics of a poor milestone goal and some of a good goal that will further your journey.

A poor goal may be:

• Too easy: If you can easily do this at your current level of fitness, it is definitely not helping you improve.  You want to be better, not the same.
• Too challenging: If you don’t run and you decide you want to run a marathon, the first step should not be run a half marathon. Know your current fitness level, and if you don’t, take some time to see where you are in whatever aspect it is you want to improve.  Once you do, set your goal slightly more challenging. If it is too hard, you will not be able to realistically or safely achieve it, and that can lead to discouragement.  
• Not measurable: If you cannot track the progress of the goal, then you don’t know if what you are doing is working and therefore cannot adjust your approach.
• Improper duration:You are not going to jump from benching 135 lbs to 225 lbs in a week. Conversely, if you set that goal out two years, you may not be challenging yourself enough.
• Not specific enough: “I want to be stronger” is a horribly unspecific goal. “I want to bench my bodyweight” is still pretty bad. Ideally, your goal would be “I want to add 5 lbs to my bench every other week until I can lift my body weight”.

On the flip side a good goal is:

• Something that challenges you yet is attainable.  This will move you a step closer to your ultimate goal and also provide gratification that you are improving, thus increasing your chances of sticking with it.
• Something that you can easily measure and see your progress.
• Something that outlines exactly what you need to do and when you need to do it.
• Something that is directly correlated to your ultimate goal and will help get you where you want to be.

If we were going to take my previous goal of get a six pack and adjust it, it could look something like this:

• Figure out maintenance calories and eat 400 calories a day below to lower body fat.
• Incorporate 3 steady state cardio sessions for 45 minutes into my daily routine 3 times a week.
• Incorporate high intensity cardio sessions into my workouts twice a week (my method of choice would be boxing, 6 rounds, 3 minutes on, one minute off).
• For the first four weeks, incorporate 3 body weight ab exercises into my workouts 3 times per week.
• After four weeks, add 3 weighted ab exercises into my routine 3 times per week. 

Now this looks more like a plan that can be accomplished.  Eating 400 calories below maintenance is not going to cause you to be ravenous and can be an everyday accomplishment.  I could easily track my cardio sessions every week along with my ab routines. Once I got into weighted ab work, I could track my weight and increase it as I got stronger.  Attainable, challenging, specific, and measurable.  

Examples Of Setting

Ultimate Goal: Increase the weight I lift on my “big 3” lifts by 30 lbs on bench, 90 lbs on deadlift, and 50 lbs on squat.

First, determine the current amount of weight that I can lift 5 times for 4 sets (225 lbs on bench, 275 lbs on deadlift, 245 lbs on squat).

Intermediate goal: Add 5 lbs to my bench and 10 lbs to my squat and deadlift.  Perform 4 sets of 5 reps. If I cannot perform all my reps do not change the weight for the next lifting session.  If I can, add another 5 lbs for bench or 10 lbs for squat and deadlift the next lifting session. It’s simple, easily measurable, specific, and directly correlated to my overall goal.

Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what your goals should be exactly.  Just like you and your aspirations, your milestone goals should be unique to you and what you are trying to accomplish.  There are online programs out there that would be sufficient for a beginner, but if you already have a fitness base, you should really take the time to customize the goals to yourself. 

A few tips that have helped me along the way:

1. Don’t try to do too much.  Set a few specific milestone goals and focus on them intensely.  If you have a million small goals it will be easy to run out of time, over train, or accomplish nothing, because you are spreading yourself too thin.  Dedicate your time and energy to a few small goals that are important to your overall success. I would say start with one to three goals at first.
2. If your focus is aesthetics like me, zone in on one or two areas that you want to improve, and focus on training those areas hard.  We all have strengths and weaknesses, keep doing what you are doing for your strengths, and focus hard on your weaknesses. You will find your strengths tend to improve along with your weaknesses even without any additional attention.
3. If you are really spinning your wheels, ask for a professional’s help.  A good personal trainer should be able to help you zero in on a good, specific set of goals for the outcome you are looking for.
4. Not all fitness goals need to live in the gym; in fact, the most impactful ones are for the kitchen.
5. Tell the world.  When you tell your friends and family what you want to accomplish, it introduces an element of accountability.  Nobody wants to look like the chump who keeps saying they are going to do something and never does it. You may think this will be annoying, but trust me, it will be less annoying than you flocking into the gym January 2^nd, hoarding all the equipment, talking on your phone on a perfectly good bench whilst forearm curling a 15 pounder right before you jump into the squat rack to rep out some curls with a couple of fives on the bar.  Say it with confidence and say it often.  Don’t tell them what you want, tell them what they can expect to see this year.

How to keep track of your goals

Once you have identified a solid set of goals, tracking your progress is key.  What you track is as unique as your goal. Whether it is writing it down or using an app, keep whatever your chosen method is handy during your workout.  

Whatever it is you are tracking, be sure to include every detail and be consistent.  Consistency is key to fitness success on so many levels. One of the biggest leaps I took to getting the body I wanted is when I diligently started tracking every aspect of my workouts and diet.  A few apps I like to use are:

• Way of Life This is more for beginners and crosses over between lifestyle and fitness.  You will not be able to track the specifics of your goals, but it’s great when just starting out to set good daily habits, including your fitness routine.  The downside is that you will have to upgrade past the free version if you are looking to track more than a few habits.
• Strides This app is not quite for beginners and takes some time to set up, but it offers unlimited potential for entering your own goals and tracking your progress.  Put the time in up front to enter your goals, and you can track anything related to your fitness plan.
• MyFitnessPal Hands down the best app I have used for tracking my nutrition goals and extremely easy to use.

Conclusion

It is very easy to feel excited when you get it in your head that you are going to transform your body, but the upfront preparation is key.  Take your time. Before you get into the gym and pick up a weight, be sure that you have a plan to succeed. As you grow and change, so should your goals. Start small, accomplish one thing, and that feeling of accomplishment will propel you into your next goal.  Success feeds itself, so take the time to help yourself succeed. As you cross off the small goals on your list, I promise it will be rewarding. The more you complete, the easier it will be to complete the next goal on your list.

As always I would love to hear some of your thoughts, goals, and accomplishments below.

Thanks for reading!