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WE SH IP TO ALGERI A VIE W D E TAILS

Setting Goals: A Realistic Approach to

Consistent Gains

Sometimes the hardest part of a fitness lifestyle is having a

smart goal. Learn everything you need to know about setting
goals & go out there & crush them!

Everywhere I look, I see training information geared towards the hardcore.

There’s nothing wrong with this – we all need motivation.

The problem comes when examining the population of people who are actually reading
and taking this information to heart.

9 times out of 10, they’re novice lifters who don’t know the first thing about proper
training, and taking advice intended for people 3 steps ahead of them in their
development and experience.

When it really comes down to it, they’d benefit just fine from simplistic advice that can
actually stand the test of time.

Truth be told, that can actually apply to us all.

Setting Goals: Back to the Basics

In my first ever personal training certification, I learned about a simple acronym that I
later passed off as elementary, but find myself giving newfound respect to: That of
setting SMART goals. Truly, anyone who sees a plateau in their training is probably
missing one of these factors, if you dig deep enough into them.

Here, it makes sense to go through them one by one.

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Specific
This may sound like common sense, but you’d be surprised how many clients I meet
who have a goal of “getting fit”, or “getting in shape”. At the end of the day, statements
like that mean absolutely nothing. Setting a proper goal means first determining what the
final product should be.

People usually train to either build muscle or burn fat. Both can be achieved, but it’s
more worthwhile to focus and zero in on one of the two for optimal results, and treat any
spillover into the other side of the coin as an added bonus.

Measurable
So let’s say we’ve established in specificity that we want to build muscle. The logical next
question would be “how much?”. It’s important that your goal has a numerical
component to it. This will make it easier to track your progress and hold yourself
accountable.

Related: Smart Training - Don't Break Your Body Trying to Build It

Instead of simply saying “I’d like to build muscle”, make it more direct. A goal of adding
10 pounds of muscle and an increase of 1 inch in your flexed upper arm would be a
good example of applying this directive.

If your goal isn’t measurable, you’ll hardly be able to make and follow a program to
attack it.

Attainable
In high school, this was probably the biggest mistake I made. My friends and I thought
that taking a creatine monohydrate cycle would equal an instant 10 pounds of solid
muscle in 6 weeks. We thought adding that to some physical labor-intensive work would
mean 20 pounds.

All of a sudden our goals for the summer break were to put on 25 pounds of muscle and
come back jacked and in charge.

Misinformed as we were, it speaks to this part of the acronym. A goal has to be

attainable based on the body’s physiological boundaries. Any program promising a
natural increase of 15 pounds of muscle in 6 or 8 weeks is lying, and that’s the cold,
hard truth about it.

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If you do everything right, your actual lean tissue increase (that’s just muscle – not fat,
not water retention or anything else) would probably be somewhere around 1 pound per
month. You’d have hit the jackpot if you gained 15 pounds of muscle over the course of
a year.

Adding voluminous size in a couple of months is an entirely different conversation and

definitely where fat and water do enter the picture. It may look like you’re not much fatter
either (since lots of the development would be intramuscular, and not necessarily
localized to, say, the stomach), but it’s important not to be misled.

Setting goals that you know the body can reach from the start is an integral part of being
satisfied with the results you see. Moreover, don’t trick yourself with the wrong
information.

Realistic
On a similar note, not only do your goals need to be realistic for your body’s physiology.
They also need to be realistic for your personal lifestyle.

If you’re working 60 hours a week at your new job, eat 2 meals per day, get 4-5 hours of
sleep per night and have a girlfriend who is grinding your gears, chasing an ambitious
training goal that relies on sufficient rest and recovery may be a pipe dream – at least for
the time being.
Related: Do You Know What it Means to Actually Train Hard?

The results you see will highly depend on your discipline in life, regardless of how
earnest your efforts may be in reaching them. Instead of aiming for a 20 pound increase
in lean gains and a 30 pound PR squat, it may be more fitting to focus on a fat loss
target that will come more easily as a product of better sleep and recovery habits thanks
to your hormones functioning more regularly.

Timely
We’ve covered everything except the end point. It’s invaluable to realize that a goal
should have a deadline. Based on what we’ve learned above, it’s implied that that
deadline is appropriate for the goal. If your goal is to train hard for the next 3 months, set
a muscle development or fat loss goal that suits that time frame (for example, lose 15lbs
of body fat and/or add 2lbs of muscle).

On another note, I’ve personally found one more application for this part of the acronym.
Look at your level of training maturation before setting a goal. If you’re a complete
beginner and lack foundation, it may not be the proper time to focus on advanced lifting
methods or extreme cosmetic development goals before working on a basis of strength.

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Likewise, someone who may have 12% body fat to drop in order to be healthier may not
benefit as readily from an isolation-rich bodybuilding program compared to a program
higher in compound strength and conditioning movements to burn fat.

An immobile desk jockey, though athletically inclined, may not be physically prepared to
jump in a hybrid program containing plyometrics, CrossFit style Olympic lifting protocols,
and devoid of preventative maintenance.

Train Smart
Your goals will be reached if you realize that at the end of the day, consistency is the key.
Also, what you see as a result depends on what you put into it as a trainee. That could
involve making the necessary lifestyle changes to make improving your physique or
health a reality.

Applying the SMART principle to your thought process will only make things easier, and
give you a much better chance for success in 2017.

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About The Author

Lee Boyce
Lee Boyce is a Strength Coach and internationally published Fitness Writer
based in Toronto Ontario. His work is regularly published in the world’s
largest fitness publications, and is frequently on tv and radio segments for
major stations.
View all by Lee Boyce »
 4 Comments + Post Comment

No
Posted Sun, 06/14/2020 - 05:40 LIKE 5
Profile
Pic Sky Lee
Consistency is always the key.

REPLY
REPLY

No
Posted Wed, 07/29/2020 - 13:05 LIKE 5
Profile
Pic Yoshi
Exactly, Sky!

REPLY
REPLY

No
Posted Mon, 01/07/2019 - 13:35 LIKE 8
Profile
Pic Marty
Achieving small goals and sticking with it all year is better than a 'bull in a china closet'
approach. Lifting weights is a steady-gain sport not an all-at-once burst without any goals
being set for continuous improvement.

REPLY
REPLY

No
Posted Sun, 04/09/2017 - 07:28 LIKE 19
Profile
Pic Mitchell King
I don't know maybe I'm an anomaly but 15 even 25lbs of muscle isn't hard to put on in a short
period of time. Never having gone to gym before took a couple buddies signed up at LA
Fitness and we religiously trained upper body only(chest, arms, back, shoulders) 3 days a
week 2.5-3 hours each time because one of the guys has degenerative bone disease and his
legs would crumble. Anyways I know that's not ideal but went that route for time being. I took
my fair share of GNC products and went from 130lbs and 13.8 body fat to 170 and 5-6
percent on given day in about your 6-8 week window plus say another 2 weeks to get our
lungs at begging. I'm back down to 130 because change of and hours at my job but that's
about to change. I think I can get up to 200lbs within a calander year. I see huge strength
gains in a few areas and I believe not doing legs really killed my bench and incline. But outside
of those 2 I could do most times more than double sometimes nearly triple what I came in at. I
don't know. I'm 36 now and this was like 3 years ago but I'll let you know how it goes. Take
some before and after shots.

REPLY
REPLY
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