Goal setting is very important in making progress in your health and fitness. Aimlessly going to the gym and going through the motions is not a foundation for making progress. You must “Train With a Purpose”. When you are not purposeful, your enthusiasm starts to wane, improvement is little if any and you end up quitting…no big surprise there. Not having goals is the equivalent to getting in the car and driving…but not having a destination or a plan. Now sometimes that can be good and even exciting, but not on a constant basis. Think about this: How can you formulate a plan without a goal? You can’t, really. Goals create motivation.
Goals create focus. Goals keep you in check. So the key is to evaluate your current situation and make a realistic long-term goal with short-term goals as stepping-stones to your ultimate achievement.
So where do you start? Again, evaluate your current health and fitness situation and establish aworthwhile goal that isn’t easily attainable but yet not ridiculously out of reach. It would serve very little purpose other than setting yourself up for failure to ask the impossible of yourself; conversely, setting goals to low leaves you in the same sinking boat of making little if any improvement.
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So how does one go about setting a goal for their exercise program? Well, for some, it can be something as basic as setting goals to actually work out a specific number of times a week/month. For others, it can be completing a certain amount of pushups, reducing their 1-mile run time by 30 seconds or achieve a specific body fat percentage. The key is to create something challenging for yourself and stay motivated and “go after it” because just sitting around isn’t going to do much for you. - Fred Fornicola
