What are SMART Fitness Goals?

Exercise is essential for a good and healthy life, however when most people choose to exercise they have some aim in their mind. In most cases, people want to lose weight, get slim, lose fat or want to shape their body and gain muscle. Depending on your goal your trainer or fitness professional will help you choose a good enough exercise. Setting a goal is very important because it helps you drive your motivation and also without setting a goal you will not be able to track your overall performance.

When it comes to smart goals, most people get very confused. The main reason is that your fitness developing program has various steps and being a layman who is not aware of these steps, most people get very intimidated. Since gender, metabolism, goal, body type and other things play a very important role in your exercise plan, people who do not consider these details end up failing in designing a good and effective exercise plan.

Since fitness goals are different, your effort and exercise plan will also be different. With the help of smart fitness goals, you will be able to use psychological tactics to stay motivated and drive your daily workout plan accordingly. It is especially important for people who find it hard to follow a long-term fitness plan.

With the help of this article, we will talk about SMART goals and their importance. We will also talk about what comes in the SMART goal and how it will help shape your fitness journey. As most people struggle with finding motivation for a workout, we will also talk about the importance of SMART goals in terms of success, motivation, and staying focused during a workout.

What Is a SMART Goal?

When it comes to the word smart most people think that it is because you need to be very smart and precise while setting a goal. However, SMART is a very clever acronym. Each alphabet stands for a very different and specific word. Within the word SMART, "S" stand for specific while M '' stands for measurable, "A" stands for attainable, "R" stands for relevant, and "T" stands for time-bound. All these things are very important because they will not only be important for setting a workout plan, they will also help you track the progress and help you stay motivated.

When you plan a goal it has to be very specific. You need to know if you want to lose weight or gain muscle. Most people set a goal that they want to stay fit but there is no way of measuring your fitness. Vague goals only confuse and make it very difficult to measure progress. You need to set an achievable goal as well so that you can make some progress rather than setting a goal that will only make you regret it and lose confidence.

From a detailed understanding of smart goals, we have elaborated this with the help of each phase and why it is so important it addresses it.

Benefits of SMART Goal

Most people think that just setting a simple goal like weight loss or muscle gain will be enough. However, they do not understand that smart goals will help them reach their goal after. It will also help them to set a goal that they will be able to track as they reach it. Some of the most important benefits that are linked with smart goals include:

• Smart goals help you make precise arrangements for future
• Smart goals keep you motivated throughout the work
• Smart goals help with predicting the progress in the next few months
• Smart goals help you make a map that you can follow toward your set target
• Smart goals are very important for designing a workout that is according to your gender, metabolism, and required features.

While setting your goal you need to be very precise. With a good numerical value, you will be able to see if you will be able to become successful in achieving your target or you will fail. By putting your goal in a numerical value, you can trace the details and set an exercise plan accordingly. A simple example of this is that if you set a target of losing 5 kg in the next 15 days, you will be able to set your diet and your workout frequency accordingly.

Most people skip out the details but if you become very specific your fitness guru will be able to help you make a plan that will make this possible. On the contrary, if you plan to lose weight only, even a one kg loss will be considered a loss. If you quantify a target, it will help you know how much more work is required.

Specific

While setting your goal you need to be very precise. With a good numerical value, you will be able to see if you will be able to become successful in achieving your target or you will fail. By putting your goal in a numerical value, you can trace the details and set an exercise plan accordingly. A simple example of this is that if you set a target of losing 5 kg in the next 15 days, you will be able to set your diet and your workout frequency accordingly.

Most people skip out the details but if you become very specific your fitness guru will be able to help you make a plan that will make this possible. On the contrary, if you plan to lose weight only, even a one kg loss will be considered a loss. If you quantify a target, it will help you know how much more work is required.

Measurable

If you are setting a specific goal it will also be measurable. This means that you will see how much weight you want to lose per day. In case there is a discrepancy in per day loss, you can easily predict if the goal will be achieved or not. In case you want to lose 10 pounds, you will be able to quantify that it can be lost in the next 12 weeks or more. If you do not set a measurable goal, you will only be able to notice a visible difference. In most cases losing one kg weight is not a very visible difference so people start to panic that their workout is very effective.

Attainable

We have all seen people setting unrealistic goals. In the heat of the moment, we try to make decisions that are not very good or effective; however, after a few days, we realize that the set goal is not very achievable. With the help of a smart goal, you will be able to select a goal for yourself that is achievable as well.

A simple example is that most people think you can lose 40 kg of weight in 30 days. This is not an attainable measurement and can harm your body as well. Most people who set unrealistic goals end up losing their motivation as well. Another very important thing is that attainable goals will help you become healthier without making you feel drained.

Relevant

This is one of the most important parts of the smart goal. Most people look at their ideals and their routines and start following them blindly. A very important thing is that everyone has a very different body type, metabolism rate, and body response. What might work for some people might not be effective for others.

When you choose some target you try to make sure that it is linked and relevant to your body type, lifestyle, health, fitness, and needs. If you are already 45kg and you still want to lose some more, this will send your body in shock. Another very important thing is that most people do not consider their medical conditions and just start following a popular workout plan. If you have hypertension or other diseases, you need to be very careful about your body and health.

Time-bound

The last step of setting a smart goal is to make sure your goal has a time frame as well. We have seen that people set a goal of losing weight but they do not realize that they need to set a time frame as well. It is up to you to select the time frame but no matter what you choose, your choice should resonate with the progress. The best practice is to keep your time frame specific to just 1-3 months so that you can track the progress easily.

If you are into fitness you might have seen that most people list their workout plan based on the time frame. This is mostly because they are trying to limit it within a time frame to spot urgency. In case you are not in a hurry you can extend that time frame as well.

Bottom Line

To sum it all up, without setting a goal you will not be able to race your progress. Most specialists say that when you keep working out without focusing on your goal, this will affect your lifestyle and you will only be wasting time. Some professionals even call it losing junk calories. In short, you might be working out but there will be no direction to your work. The worst thing is that you might be using two different kinds of workouts which will impact your body differently. For gaining muscle you have to start weight training and your diet consists of surplus calories.

On the contrary, if you look at the weight loss process, you will see that it will only help you work on losing fat and your calorie count will go in minus. All these details, drive your workout plan and keep you motivated. When your goals are mixed, you will not be able to track down the progress at all.