As entrepreneurs, it is important to look after your health, and we all know that we need to get enough exercise to stay healthy. Too much sitting in front of the computer screen can wreak havoc with our health, so let’s look at how to set fitness goals for yourself.
As you are probably really good at setting work-oriented goals for yourself already, how to set fitness goals should be a breezed for you. Let’s look at how to get started with this.
How To Set Fitness Goals
First You Need To Stick To Your Fitness Resolution
Here we are the beginning of a new year. Every January comes with a sense of renewal for many people. A common theme amongst individuals is to create a resolution involving things they would like to change or achieve in the coming 365 days.
One of the more prevalent resolutions usually involves fitness. Whether it be to simply improve overall physical appearance, get healthier, or maybe just become stronger, many people base their resolutions around some facet of physical fitness.
Unfortunately, as you are probably aware, the majority of New Year’s resolutions fail. The fiery motivation felt in late December to mid-January begins to wane and by February. Most people find themselves at the same place they were the year before.
Fitness goals are notoriously prone to not being fulfilled. If you’ve ever spent much time in a gym, you know the routine. For the entire month of January, there is often a line at every piece of equipment in the building. As it gets into February and March, the machines become easily accessible and there are no more ques.
Advertisements flood the media with discount gym membership rates, dietary supplements, and all sorts of shiny new pieces of equipment promising to transform your body in a short amount of time. The problem is that unless you stick to your fitness resolution, it will all be in vain, no matter how much money you spend.
Let’s look at a few things that might help you when it comes to how to set fitness goals and break things down into a few tips that will hopefully be of help to you for this new year.
If you can set yourself apart from the statistics, you will undoubtedly thank yourself next December when you are reveling in your progress while others are starting the typical, “maybe next year” routine!
1. Keep Things Simple
When embarking on a new fitness journey, it is so easy to become overwhelmed. Contemplating which workout routine to start, what foods to eat, even the outfit to wear to the gym can get in the way of your overall goal. Fitness, as well as life in general, is best kept simple.
The best workout routine is the one you will stick to. So find something that you enjoy doing, because if you don’t enjoy doing it you won’t keep up with it.
Similarly, your nutrition should not be rocket science. You know what foods are good for you and what is junk. The biggest determining factor pertaining to your success in fitness is consistency.
2. Set Reasonable Goals
The media does a remarkable job of making drastic body transformations seem like an overnight process. We are constantly bombarded with images and television commercials promising that if you buy their equipment or take a certain supplement, you will look identical to the models used to promote these products.
Even more comical is the timeframes reported by these advertisements. How many times have you heard, “In just 15 minutes per day, 3 times per week, you will finally have those six-pack abs?” This is all nonsense, as physical changes to your physique do not work this way.
Fitness, like making money online, is a waiting game. As you begin your journey, it is critical to realize that while you WILL see progress, it doesn’t happen overnight. Therefore, instead of planning on going to the gym 7 days per week and eating nothing but rice and chicken, rather set goals that you can stick to.
Be flexible when it comes to your version of success.
Start small, like holding yourself accountable to 3 workouts per week and avoiding your favorite late-night junk food. Swap a bad habit for a good one and little by little you will see improvement.
3. Develop A Strong “Why”
As we have already discussed, fitness and exercise are about consistency. Remember this, the incredible sense of motivation and enthusiasm you feel at the start WILL come and go. If your only goal to work out is to “look better,” there are going to be a lot of days in which that is simply not enough.
If you are going to stick to your fitness goals this year, developing a reason why that is strong enough to stick it out even when the motivation cools off, the excitement isn’t there and you’d much rather stay in and watch television instead is MANDATORY.
Your “why” has to be unique to you. Find whatever that is and use it to push through the hard days!
4. Find A Workout Buddy
It always helps to have somebody to exercise with that you can be accountable to and vice versa. It is always more fun to exercise together, and you can at the same time motivate each other and push each other.
Try a mini competition between you to see for instance who can plank for 2 minutes first or do 30 situps. This will make getting into shape a lot more fun for both of you.
5. Remember To Reward Yourself
Set yourself milestones and every time you hit one of them, treat yourself. It could be something small like a cappuccino at your favorite coffee shop to something larger like a new pair of sneakers. Whatever it is make it something you really want and work your way towards your reward.
This really helps to keep you motivated, but you need to be strict on yourself here – no cheating!
Please feel free to comment below if you have any other good ideas when it comes to how to set fitness goals – I would love to hear your thoughts.
Thank you for this informative article. Personally, I think the best way into reaching any of your goals is setting measurable and achievable goals. What I mean by that is that each day you should have at least one smaller goal completed.
I also think that splitting one major goal into many smaller ones over time helps a lot with overall motivation and confidence. Fitness requires strong will, especially for persons who are not used to doing something, like working out.
Success consits of many smaller everyday actions and with that mindset you can really achieve anything.
Thank you. I will bookmark your website for future posts.
Thank you Strahinja and you are right, for people who don’t like exercising or are not used to exercise, it is best to break down the goals into smaller ones and not put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect. With exercise, every bit helps.
I found that there’s a lot of people out there who think big ( and that’s a good thing ). But some times it can lead to dissatisfaction In the way they are trying to achieve their goals. I found it better for me to start small, with every goal I succeed in, thus boosting my confidence.
When I apply this to my routine … it not only helps me stay interested in what I’m putting my efforts into but it also builds my endurance giving me the strength to go on to setting bigger goals. Accomplishments of overcoming my weaknesses and setting a pace that works for me leads me to strive for greater things.
Yes it definitely helps to set small attainable goals for yourself so that you can progress forward at a comfortable pace and because you keep moving forward, you stay motivated.
Fitness is a topic I can relate to, I work out 4 out of every 5 days. Probably the only thing I could to is to make my workout longer. I found this post interesting. Keep it simple and set reasonable goals. I think this is the easy part for myself, if not for other people. I could improve by setting higher goals, but don’t know if I could stick to anything higher. My why is so I don’t get soft and flabby. The why is so I can lose weight, I could stand to lose 50 lbs. I work out by myself, especially in these Corona virus days. I do reward myself; I read that if you cheat once a week, you can trick your body’s metabolism one day, and then be strict on the diet the other six. It’s a motivational post, it got me thinking.
You are right about not setting goals too high, otherwise one tends to give up. The why’s are also important to keep you motivated. Well done on working out on your own, as I definitely prefer to do it with a group or at the moment even just one other person.