Setting SMART Goals for the gym
Many people fail to make the progress they desire in the gym. They work hard but don't seem to make the progress they want. A key reason they feel this way is that they haven't spent enough time thinking about what they are trying to achieve. If you're going to achieve great things in your life or in the gym, you need to set goals. In today's article, we will look at the importance and the practice of goal setting.
Goal setting is a powerful tool for thinking about your future and giving yourself the motivation to turn your vision into reality. By knowing precisely what you want to achieve, you know where you have to concentrate your efforts and will be able to avoid distractions that can lead you astray.
To begin setting goals for the gym, you need first to create your ideal vision for yourself. Where do you want to be 5-10 years from now? Identify the broad-scale goals that you want to achieve. Next, you break them down into smaller and smaller targets that you must hit on your way to achieving your lifelong goals. Finally, once you have your plan, you can start working to achieve your goals.
This is why we begin the process of setting goals by looking at our "lifetime" goals. Then we work down to things we can do in smaller and smaller increments of time until we can start moving toward them.
Step 1: Setting Lifetime Goals
The first step in setting our goals is to consider what we want to achieve in our life as a lifter. Setting these lifetime goals gives us the overall perspective and framework that shapes all the other aspects of our decision-making. Spend a significant amount of time thinking through this vision for your future. What do you want to accomplish as a lifter? After you have completed this brainstorming process, try trimming your list of goals down to the most important ones. This way, you will wind up with a small number of genuinely meaningful goals that you can focus on.
Step 2: Setting Smaller Goals
Once you have set your lifetime goals, develop a five-year plan of smaller goals that you need to achieve to achieve your lifetime ideal. After you have done this, create a one-year plan, a six-month plan, and a monthly plan of progressively smaller goals that you need to reach to achieve your vision. Each of the progressively smaller increments should be based on the previous plan. Finally, review your plans, and make sure they fit into one another, and build on one another to help you achieve your lifetime plan.
Once you have decided on your first set of goals, keep the process going by reviewing and updating your goals on a daily or weekly basis. Often revisit your long-term plans, and modify them to reflect the changes in your life and circumstances.
SMART Goals:
One methodology for setting and achieving goals and to make goals more powerful is to utilize SMART goals. SMART stands for:
S-Specific
M-Measurable
A-Attainable
R-Relevant
T-Time Bound
For example, instead of having a goal of "having as high a bench press as possible," it's more powerful to use the SMART goal "To bench press 405lbs by December 31st, 2022."
Be precise: set goals that are as specific as possible, putting times and amounts that can be measured and achieved. If you do this, you'll know exactly when you have completed the goal.
Write goals down: The act of writing your goals down gives them more force and gives you a document you can refer to during your process.
Set realistic goals: It's essential to set goals you can, in fact, achieve. They should be big and audacious but also achievable.
Set priorities: When you have several goals, give each a relative importance. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed and helps direct your efforts to the most important goals.
Keep smaller goals small: Keep the small intermediate goals small and achievable. If a plan is too large, it can seem like you're not making any progress. By keeping goals small and incremental, it gives you more opportunities to win.
Once you have your plan in place, you are ready to head down the road of progress. With proper planning, discipline, and consistency to put in the work, you can achieve greatness.
See you in the gym,
Rob Campbell