How To Set Great Goals

It is very difficult to achieve anything in life worth having without first setting a great goal.

Yet so many people fall foul of setting terrible goals especially when it comes to health and fitness.

So with that said let’s first define a bad goal. Here are the two most common ‘bad goals’ I hear people say...

I want to get a bit fitter
I want to lose a bit of weight

The reason they are bad goals is because they effectively do not mean anything.

They are vague, non-specific, you can't measure them and it is impossible to form any type of structure or weekly/monthly plan to achieve them.

Here are 4 steps to help you avoid setting terrible goals and instead significantly increase your chance of actually achieving something great.

For the purpose of this blog let's use the following 4 steps to turn ‘I want to get a bit fitter’ into a great goal.

Step 1 Make is specific

Use this step to define what you mean by ‘getting fitter’. This can of course mean anything - to be able to hike, cycle, run, swim, complete a hero WOD... The list is endless. Choose something that is important to you. So as an example and for the purpose of this blog let’s turn ‘getting fitter’ into ‘being able to run’.

Step 2 Make it measurable

This step requires you to start adding some parameters around your goal. Using our example we have established that running is the goal but for how long? So for the purpose of this blog let’s choose a distance of 5km with the goal of being able to run that distance without stopping.

Step 3 Make it attainable and realistic

Next we must make sure that the goal we set is realistic. Not too easy that it’s not worth the effort but not too hard that you're setting yourself up for failure. So in this example let’s assume this person is new to running so 13 weeks could be a realistic timeframe to go from never running to being able to run 5km without stopping.

Step 4 Make it timely

Then finally set a time frame by which you hope to achieve your goal. So in this example let’s assume we will start on the 1st Jan 2023, which would mean that we expect to achieve our goal by 1st April 2023 (13 weeks).

Pulling it all together

By working through the 4 steps we have turned a bad goal of ‘I want to get a bit fitter’ into a great goal of ‘I want to run 5km without stopping by the 1st April 2023’

This has turned a vague goal into a very specific goal. The beauty of a specific goal is that you can now formulate a very specific step by step / week by week plan to actually achieve it. Whereas it is impossible to put any type of training plan or structure around bad goals and therefore the likelihood of achieving it is almost zero.

So do not fall foul of setting bad goals. Instead use these 4 steps to establish great goals before working with your Coach to put a plan in place to actually achieve it.

Good luck,

Matt

Oh and before you go... If you are a current member of FITISM we have a brand new goal setting process to help you. Click here to set a goal and send it to your Coach