What everyone ought to know about goal setting

Setting goals for your physical exercise can be tricky. If the goals are too easy, you will lose interest and motivation very quickly. If they are too hard, you will be constantly underachieving, eventually get depressed and give up. So rather than just picking an event or a performance out of the ether and training blindly towards it, try using the SMARTER principles when setting your goals. S – Specific – set goals that are specific to the things you want to achieve. Avoid ambiguity; make it clear what is required to achieve each goal. M – Measurable – have some way of measuring whether or not the goal has been achieved. Whether it’s a performance measure like heart rate, time, power or something psychological like an increase in confidence and motivation. You won’t know if you’re making progress unless you can measure it somehow. A – Agreed/Accepted – make sure you believe and accept that the goals you have set are the right ones to help you achieve what you want to achieve. Don’t do something because you’ve been told it’s what you need to do in order to get somewhere. Do it because you believe it is. You should be convinced that you are on the right track. R – Realistic – everyone wants to be the champion in their chosen discipline, right? But come on – make you goals realistic otherwise you’ll never achieve them and risk regular disappointment. T – Time-phased – have a clear time frame for achieving your goals so that you can achieve it, tick it off and move on to the next one. E – Exciting – if it’s not fun, you won’t keep at it. So don’t set goals you know that you’re not going to enjoy working towards. R – Recorded – keep a log or a training diary of your goals, how you went about achieving them and how much success (or otherwise) you had. This is very useful to refer to as you might be re-using them in the future. The Instructors at Tring Martial Arts can work with you and help to produce your own goals, specific to what you want to achieve from your training. Call us on 01442 768057 to find out more, or visit www.tringmartialarts.com for more information.