How To Effectively Set Your Fitness Goals

Smart & Effective Goal Setting Tips

Goal setting.

Perhaps the most exciting or potentially the most uncomfortable part of your fitness journey. 

Regardless of your relationship with goal setting, it is still a key component when it comes to maximizing your success rates. 

Some of us (I’m included here) love setting goals. We almost like setting goals more than we actually enjoy executing them.

We get a rush just from the idea. The “fresh start”, the “this time is going to be different!” mentality. 

While some of us loathe the experience and just avoid it. It feels cringey. It seems too idealistic. In reality, it just may be more vulnerable than we’d like to admit. 

Goal setting does require two key things from the start in order for it to be effective. It requires you to be vulnerable enough to open up and share what you actually want and need. While it also requires you to be realistic enough for the goals to be actually acheiveable.

If anything above resonates with you, don’t be afraid to admit it. We are all humans and are inherenetly flawed. The goal is not to erradicate our flaws. The goal is to be able to work with them, without them sabotaging our success. 

For example, if you’re too much of a dreamer, it’s going to be valuable to know that when goal setting. This may lead to you setting more goals than you can actually work toward or too big of goals that just aren’t realistic. 

If you’re a too pessimistic or closed off, it may lead to you to never set effective goals because “why bother? they’re not going to work anyways.” Or because you won’t open up enough (even to just yourself) to actually express what you wantand need. 

You don't need to change these characteristics about yourself per se. It just helps to be aware of them while setting your goals. For example, I am a dreamer. Which means I have to set boundaries around how many and how lofty my goals are at a given time. Without limitations, I would set a million goals that are huge. Then feel like an asshole because I failed most of them. Not because I’m a failure, but because they just weren’t realistic. Regardless, I would still be left feeling like a failure. Which would be by my own doing. This is what I mean when I say you need to work with your flaws or limitations when it comes to effective goal setting. 

Now, let’s talk about some helpful strategies that you’ll want to consider when setting your fitness goals. 

Be SMART

No doubt you’ve heard this before. SMART goals are as cliche as it gets when it comes to goal setting. For good reason. The acronym holds up and is easy enough remember. Effective, measurable and accessible. Doesn’t get much better than that. 

In case you haven’t heard of a SMART goal, I’ll briefly elaborate. 

SMART stands for:

Some folks use “attainable” instead of actionable. To be honest, I find that a bit redundant with realistic. So I personally prefer actionable and think it makes more sense.

Let’s break this down piece by piece. 

1. You should set a specific goal rather than a vague goal. Here is an example:

Vague — “I want to get strong”
Specific — “I want to increase my strength so that I can do 10 push ups”

2. Your goal should be measurable as opposed to being purely subjective or unable to monitor/compare. Example:

Less Measurable — “I want to get in shape”
More Measurable — “I want to improve on my current 5K time!”

3. Your goal should be actionable. Meaning you can actually take action toward this goal right now.

 A great example would have been reminiscent over the pandemic. If you had no access to a gym, setting gym specific goals without equipment available would be a non-actionable goal. While setting a goal with the equipment you have available would be more actionable. 

4. Your goal should be realistic. Difficult enough goals are valuable, but if its out of reach, it can be a net negative for your likelihood of success. Example:

Not Realistic — “I want to lose 10 lbs before my vacation in two weeks!”
Realistic — “I want to lose 10 lbs in 10–12 weeks.”

5. Your goal should be time-bound. 

There is happy medium here though. If your goals are too time crunched, they can just add more stress and pressure. Make sure the time set is realistic. If you don’t achieve it that time, it’s totally okay. You can use it as a time to reflect. Reflect on if the time period was even realistic. Or on what you could have improved on in order to have achieved your goal. Then learn from that reflection and apply it your strategy going forward. 

With all that in mind, let’s jump to some more considerations and strategies that can help you with your goal setting process. 

Goal Setting Theory

Goal setting actually has plenty of research behind it. I recently read through a large breakdown of different strategies and how they impacted behaviour change. 

This breakdown was factoring the idea of goal setting theory and putting it to the test. Goal setting theory was developed by two psychologists named Gary P. Latham and Edwin Locke. They pioneered a framework of goal setting they called goal setting theory. I should mention, it was formed doing organizational psychology experiments relating to work-centric task performance. 

Here was the basic jist:

1.Goals should be conscious and specific
2. Goals should be adequately challenging
3. You should be committed to the goal
4. Goals should not be too complex
5. Feedback should be given back to the person/group working toward a goal

This paper from the journal of consulting and clinical psychology in 2017 did a meta-analysis of controlled trials to see if many of these strategies performed in the psychology literature. 

Here is what it found:

Goal setting in general yielded more behaviour change than when not having a goal set — seems pretty intuitive. 

Harder goals did outperform easier goals. 

Both were effective, but having a more challenging goal may be the way to go since it might be more motivating and enticing than a very small one that is too easy.

With that being said, nuance still prevails. If you get overwhelmed by harder goals, then set smaller and more digestible ones. Let them stack and watch your progress roll in over time.

If you really get up for a big goal, then make it more challenging. Individuality should not be abandoned for statistical averages. 

When setting goals with someone, doing so face to face and sharing them publicly added an extra effect. 

Face to face is just more personal and can make it seem more real. As opposed to writing it down online.

Now some people prefer to do so online, if that’s you, go for it!

If you are struggling with your goals and have never tried sharing publicly or goal setting face to face with a colleague, mentor or coach, I recommned giving it a shot. Could give you an extra edge of accountability. 

Group Goals showed an increase in effectiveness compared to individual goals.

This does not mean individual goals should be nixed.

Most fitness goals will be individual goals.

My suggestion from here is if you really struggle alone, seeking support will be a positive.

This can mean hiring a coach, finding a training partner or even joining some sort of fitness community.

All of these things can help you with feeling more supported and maybe even working toward a common goal with others!

Lastly, having your progress monitored by someone else without feedback showed larger improvements in behaviour change. 

This may sound strange. Especially since feedback was a key part of goal setting theory. This does not make feedback unhelpful. Context always matters. If anything, this showed me that being held accountable may trump feedback. Just being monitored makes you more accountantable. You know someone else is going to see your progress — which can be motivating by itself. I don’t know about you, but I have lied to myself countless times about my goals. Largely because I kept them in my brain. Nobody else knew about them and I just felt less accountable as a result. Even doing something as small as writing them down can make them seem more real. So having the outcomes monitored by someone else can be a powerful source of accountability. 

Feedback is still important. Contextually, solicited feedback takes precedant in my experience. Giving feedback to someone who doesn’t want it, is a great way to piss them off while also not helping them. So if you need feedback, ask for it. If you’re giving feedback, ask that person if they want it. As a coach and just a human, this has been a beneficial tactic that I’ve added to my communication arsenal. 

I mention all of that to just add more potential strategies to your goal setting repetoir. Some strategies based off of data and some based off theories from minds who spent a lifetime seeking solutions to goal setting problems. 

Excellence VS Perfection

The last idea I want to put fourth, is the idea of pursuing excellence rather than chasing perfection. This came to me after reading a research breakdown by Eric Helms in MASS (monthly applications in strength sport) regarding this paper examining the role of perfectionism and athlete performance and burnout.

Eric explored the idea of pursuing excellence rather than chasing perfection. The study compared perfectionistic striving vs perfectionistic concerns. Striving was more positive focused while concerned was more negative focused — like being afraid to make mistakes or be judged. 

Perfectionistic striving was more associated with higher perceived performance and lower levels of burnout and perfectionistic concern was more associated with higher scores of burnout and training distress with lower scores of perceived performance. 

I liked Eric’s adjustment here to focusing on striving for excellence vs perfection. Perfection striving can still be a negative mindset in my opinion. Perfection doesn’t really exist and will seemingly always have you up against impossible standards. While focusing on excelling can simply mean being better than you were. Which can be realistic in most contexts. 

An example would be with your compliance. Perfect would mean 100% compliance. Whether with your diet, your training or any general habit. Being 100% perfect leaves little room for flexibilty. Which can be a miserable exsistance. While aiming to excel still leaves room for your life. Maybe you were 70% compliant last month. 75% would be excelling compared to last month. Seeing improvements while also still being flexible. Which is the sweet spot for most of us. 

This also brings up perceived level of performance. Performance can be objective.

 Example: deadlifting 200 pounds

This is an objective performance marker. With that being said, there is still your perception of that performance. Which can impact your stress levels, your love of the sport/challenge and your self image. 

If you expected 210 pounds, this feat may seem like a failure. Even if it was still a personal best for you. This could potentially leave you feeling defeated after setting a new record. This is the downside of always aiming to be perfect or working against unrealistic expectations. 

Which is why I reccommend pursuing excellence. Aim to be better, not perfect. Set specific goals, but keep them realistic. Leave room for flexibilty, but hold yourself accountable. 

This is the balance of compassionate and effective goal setting. 

The balance of pushing yourself to be better while also holding space for mistakes, imperfection and flexibility. 

If you can do that while having your goals be SMART and potentially even incorporating some of the strategies listed above, you’re setting some fantastic goals that you’re primed to achieve. 

Summary

-Your goals should be SMART. This means they’re specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time bound. 

-You should be vulnerable (at least with yourself) so that you can set some goals that truly mean something to you. 

-Benefical strategies can be making them sufficiently challenging, setting/sharing them publicly, working toward them with a team or with support and potentially have your progress monitored by someone else.

-Leave room for self compassion and mistakes. Being too hard on yourself and setting unrealistic standards probably won’t help you too much.

-Pursue excellence instead of chasing perfection. 

Cheers

-Coach Dylan🍻

References:

1. Unique effects of setting goals on behavior change: Systematic review and meta-analysis
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29189034/

2. MASS research review
https://www.strongerbyscience.com/mass/

3. The role of perfectionism in predicting athlete burnout, training distress, and sports performance: A short-term and long-term longitudinal perspective
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33818303/