How to Set Health and Fitness Goals using the SMARTER Method
How to Set Health and Fitness Goals Using the SMARTER Method
By now most Americans have lost focus and motivation to stick with their 2020 New Year's resolutions. The largest drop-off occurs within the first six weeks, and at this point, about eight weeks past New Year's Day, all but about 10-15% of us have failed to achieve our resolutions or quit altogether.
The good news: making new year resolutions is really just goal setting with a fancier name, and done on a very specific day each year. We can set new goals at any time of the year, at any time during our lives. Since I run a business centered on health and fitness, let's talk about exactly how to set health and fitness goals.
Determine Your Priorities
First, we need to think about our health and fitness priorities and what is really important to us, and the vast majority of people reading this article value at least one of the following things:
How you look - for many Americans, our physical appearance plays a big role in our confidence, self-esteem, and overall mood
How you feel - if you suffer from any type of pain, it is difficult to enjoy your life to the fullest
How you move - again, any impairments to how well you move and get around in your daily life will dramatically affect your
99% of our health and fitness goals will fall into one of those three categories, and there is lots of cross-over of course.
How to Set SMARTER Goals
Now, second, once you decide on your priorities - whether that is looking better, feeling better, or moving better - we need to whittle those down into single goals. One of the best ways to set a single goal is using the SMARTER method, which gives us (7) criteria for the right way to set goals:
Specific: the more specific your goal, the better. Example: instead of "I want to lose weight", "I want to lose ten pounds" is more specific.
Measurable: you want goals that you can measure so you can have objective feedback. Example: instead of "I want to look better", use "I want to lose three inches from my waist."
Achievable: there is no point in setting unrealistic goals that you could never achieve. Example: instead of "I want to look like Arnold Schwarzenneger when he was Mr. Olympia," I may use "I want to have the same proportions as Arnold when he was Mr. Olympia."
Relevant: your health and fitness goals must be relevant to your health and fitness and in harmony with your overall philosophy of life. When we seek a goal that does not align with our values, we will be fighting against ourselves the entire journey.
Time-bound: you need to put deadlines on yourself to reach your goals because deadlines force us to remain focused. Example: instead of "I want to bench press 250 pounds", use "I want to bench press 250 pounds in six months or less."
Evaluate: you must evaluate your progress (or lack thereof) regularly, as this improves our motivation and focus. Example: instead of "I want to bench press 250 pounds in six months or less", use "I want to bench press 250 pounds in six months or less and I will test my bench press every six weeks to measure progress."
Readjustable: when you set your health and fitness goals the right way, they will be open to revision should something unexpected occur. Let's say that you have a goal of "I want to bench press 250lbs in six months or less and I will test it every six weeks," but two months after setting that goal, a family member becomes gravely ill or has a very serious accident and you have to provide care for them for a month until they recuperate. During that month, you probably won't work on your bench press or even go to the gym at all. With a SMARTER goal, you can readjust your goal to account for this unexpected life event, helping you to avoid failure and avoid beating yourself up after those six months when you don't bench press 250lbs because you took a month off.
Using the SMARTER method of setting your health and fitness goals, you will probably achieve much more than you ever have before. When goals are set the right way, they provide motivation, focus, energy, and much more. They give us a target, a picture to work towards. And they ensure that our efforts are directed at what's actually important to us - as motivational speaker Zig Ziglar often said,
"You cannot make it as a wandering generality; you must become a meaningful specific."
-Shane
P.S. Setting a new health and fitness goal, attempting to achieve it, and failing, is still better than having not set any goal in the first place. Many people suffer from a fear of failure, even if they are the only person who might know about the failure. If you have anxiety about setting a new health and fitness goal, I encourage you to start with one thing and set a short deadline for it. For example, “I will drink eight glasses of water each day for the next five days.” That may seem overly simple, but achieving that health goal can motivate you to take on larger goals with longer timelines.