Want to Achieve your Health Goals? Use these 5 Tips
As the year begins to wind up, itโs a good time to reflect back on our goals from the previous 12 months. Did you achieve what you wanted to? If not, what stood in your way? If you did (great job), what do you want to work towards next?
Your health goals are as individual to you as your fingerprint. They depend on your lifestyle, circumstances, what you enjoy doing, and your overall wellbeing.
To give yourself the best chance of succeeding, itโs important to set health goals with purpose. Saying that you want to get fitter/stronger/healthier is great, but itโs the action that helps you achieve that goal. It can be frustrating to work towards something without a plan, so Iโm here to help using a technique called SMART goals.
SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measureable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. It is a five step checkpoint process to stop you setting fluffy, half thought out, pie in the sky goals that you continue to set year after year without getting any closer to achieving it.
So where do we start? Letโs use increasing strength as an example.
- Specific
Try to be as specific as possible when setting your goal. Sure, you want to get stronger, but what does that actually mean? What does it look like? Are you wanting to improve the strength of just one lift, or are you looking at global strength across a range of lifts? What is the actual goal you are working towards?
- Measureable
How are you going to objectively measure your goal? How do you know youโve actually achieved what you set out to achieve?
- Achievable
Youโre aiming to increase your strength, but is the target youโve set for yourself achievable? Have you based that goal off of yourself and your own abilities and lifestyle, or have you pulled an obscure goal off the internet or from a training partner that has different commitments or restraints from you?
- Realistic
How realistic your goal is comes down to you as an individual. Are you able to put in the work consistently to make your goal a reality? Does your training history, body type, or ability levels offer any obstacles that may stand in your way?
- Timely
How much time are you giving yourself to achieve this goal? If youโre expecting to see tangible strength improvements after a couple of training sessions, youโre going to be suitably disappointed. Mentally set yourself up for the long haul, and speak to someone with expertise to set an intelligent timeframe for you, your needs, and your body.
Our original goal was to improve strength. This goal is pretty two dimensional and doesnโt have a lot of substance or drive behind it.ย
If we take that original goal, and make it a bit smarter, it would look like this:
Increase back squat 3RM by 10kg (specific, measurable) within three months (timely) by training consistently three times per week using an undulating strength program (achievable, realistic).
Same goal. Different format. Much more likely to end in success.
RACHEL EVANS
Exercise Physiologist
Rachel is an Accredited Exercise Physiologist based in Australia. She has worked with hundreds of clients to help them become fitter, stronger, healthier and more confident regardless of age, injury or experience level. She is the founder and director of RE.connection Project – an online program and community aiming to make health and wellness more accessible to women around the world.
Website:ย www.reconnectionproject.com.au
Instagram:ย @re.connection_project
Facebook:ย www.facebook.com/re.
