Setting Goals

[DarthAvarous]

Why make goals in the first place? Well for one, it is incredibly difficult to remain consistent with your workout plans, as well as staying motivated in the first place. Goals give meaning to our actions. They inspire us to stay on the path of self-improvement. We set goals for ourselves every day. Some large and some small. It may be to work overtime for months to get that raise, or it could be as trivial as making sure you're the first one up in the morning for a shower. These goals are created almost without us even meaning too. They are simplistic everyday life goals that we set for ourselves to stay on track for the day. This is why we set goals for getting in shape. They keep us on track through the good and bad times. We all need goals, like it or not.

There are goals throughout this process that will be met, but there will also be goals that you are constantly striving to reach. There may even be goals that you can’t achieve, which can be hard to cope with. For instance, Twilight became Princess Celestia’s pupil and united the Elements of Harmony. Rainbow Dash has yet to reach her goal of joining the Wonderbolts, but she still practices her moves everyday with the hope of eventually reaching her goal. Then there was Applejack, who had a goal of apple bucking every tree at Sweet Apple Acres all by herself. Unfortunately she fell short. Regardless, Applejack got honest with the most important pony in Equestria. Herself! Sometimes you set the bar just a little too high and although we all want to avoid that, it happens to everyone. There have been plenty of times I bit off more then I could chew. Just remember, dust yourself off and hop back on the horse (Or pony). Whatever you do, just stay positive, there are plenty of goals to make, and even more to achieve.

DJKBrony

[gymrat]

So, I made a post about goals too. It was more focused on exercise itself, but the same ideas apply to all parts of fitness and health, heck even life!

One of the biggest problems I see in the gym is people doing exercises that are inconsistent with their goals. Yesterday I saw someone doing five sets of one rep in the bench press to build muscle in their chest. (Hint: one rep maxes don't build much muscle)

Of course, the first step to training for your goals is to decide what your goals are. They really can be based off of whatever you want so long as they are follow the following guidelines:
Specific
Mesurable
Action-oriented
Realistic
Time and resource constrained

Some of you might be scratching your heads, wondering what I'm talking about. Here is an example of bad goals followed by a better, revised list of the same goals.

Get faster
Increase endurance
Loose weight
Get a bigger bench

vs.

Run 400 meters in under 65 seconds
Run 1.5 miles in under 13 minutes
Loose 10 lbs of fat
Bench press 175 lbs three times

I hope that you all can see the difference here. And it is a critical one. Setting good goals is the key to making progress in your fitness.

The first list of goals will allow you to say "Oh, I'm fit enough now. I'm strong enough. I've lost enough weight." The second set forces you to look at yourself ans say "Well, my 400 time is where I want it to be, but I should probably do some longer runs because my 1.5 mile time is not doing as well. I've lost 5 lbs of fat which is good, and I can bench 175 two times! I'm almost there!"

I also would ask you to write own your stinkin' goals so you never forget them! It really helps. Do it.

I can't tell you the number of people who come into the gym saying "I wanna get swole!" or "I want to get toned up for summer." You might be one of these people. And that is fine. Most people are like that.

But I promise you that you will see better progress if you follow the SMART plan for setting goals. If you set real goals, you give yourself a powerful tool to gauge your progress and motivate yourself to workout. And there is nothing quite like the satisfaction of getting to cross off that 25 minute 5k, that 25th lb lost, that first pullup.

So bronies, what are your goals?

-gymrat