How To Set Fitness Goals The Smart Way – Achievable

Picking up from my last blog, using the SMART framework, you should consider five focus areas when setting your goals to help make them more realizable.  SMART goals should be:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Timely

In today’s blog let’s focus on how your goal needs to be Achievable.

While it is encouraged to set goals that challenge you, it is equally important that those goals are realistic.  For example, if you’ve researched all the benefits of holding an elbow plank and have determined that 60 seconds is the optimal time for which to hold it, that might be fine. As a beginner, however, how practical is it for you to achieve that goal. It may not be two weeks, or 30 days for that matter. It is more likely, however, that in 60 days, by starting at a 20 or 30 second plank for the first week and increasing the time in increments of 10 seconds every two weeks, you will reach that goal.  By breaking down the number and building on it within a realistic time frame we can make goals Achievable.

This can also be done be simply setting relatively smaller goals. I became a marathon distance runner by doing exactly that – setting achievable goals and reaching them before moving on to the next. This enabled me to build over the long haul. I constantly had my eye on the big picture, but there were hurdles to get over along the way, and setting and completing realistic objectives got me to the starting and finish line of each race. 

Stay tuned for my next blog, where we’ll discuss the importance of Relevant goals.