Creating Fitness Goals: A Masterclass in Setting Goals That Change Your Life

Why is it important to set fitness goals? Having a fitness goal can have a huge impact on your fitness success. If you want exercise to be a consistent part of your life, setting and reaching goals is a must, not a choice. When you’re creating fitness goals, there are ways to make them more or less effective. Throughout this article, we’re going to go through all the steps of making an effective and motivating goal! Each section will have questions for you to answer to prompt you to create the best goal for you.

Your Workout Why

It’s common to have a mindset block when it comes to goals. There’s a lot of pressure around reaching them and feelings of failure if you don’t reach them within a certain amount of time. While I’m going to be using the term “goal” for the rest of this article, a helpful reframe can be to think about your “why” instead.

Your “why” is the reason you want to exercise. It’s the change you want to see in your life when fitness is a priority. Thinking about your why pulls your focus deeper and makes you think about what you want to improve. It’s more powerful than a surface-level goal that comes and goes. Your fitness why will be more personal and do more to keep you motivated if you’re willing to put effort into finding it. You might even be surprised at what comes up for you when you start digging!

We’re going to talk later in the article about connecting your goal to your personal values, but for now, ask yourself “Why?”

Why do you want fitness to be a part of your life?

Your answer.

Why?

Continue for another couple whys until you feel like you’re as deep as you can get. The more honest with yourself you are, the better.

Yes, it sounds like a too-curious kindergartener, but it’s effective, I promise! Also, before we move on: It’s okay if your why changes over time! These don’t have to be forever choices- they just have to work for you right now.

No More “Shoulds”

Before you get too deep into your “why,” we need to talk about “shoulds.” A huge part of the issue people have with setting goals is that they’re not setting ones that they actually want. Instead, they’re setting goals they think they should have. Whether you’re influenced by people close to you, your community, or society as a whole, setting a goal you’re supposed to have won’t work. Goals that you don’t personally want or believe in usually don’t stick around long enough to change your behavior. If they do, you won’t be happy when you reach those goals.

No matter what anyone else says, your fitness journey is 100% up to you! You don’t owe anyone a different choice about what you want to do with your body.

Is the goal you feel like you should have different from the one you want to work toward?

What do you currently believe about fitness that might have an effect on your goal setting?

Are those beliefs actually true, or are they things you’ve absorbed from people around you/media?

What do you want when it comes to fitness?

Focus

It might seem like a good idea to try to set many goals at once, but… multitasking can actually make you less likely to reach any of your goals! Multitasking is so expected nowadays that we tend to have a really hard time choosing less. When you don’t reach your goals, the urge is to just keep adding more goals to reach instead of focusing in and pushing through with one.

Like I reference in Slow Productivity 🤝 Your Workouts, Cal Newport talks about how less is more. Focusing is the sustainable way to be productive. When you involve fitness in your life, you want it to be sustainable. Otherwise you risk burnout and injury. When it comes to choosing your workout goals, pick 1-2. You can’t better at running, lifting weights, yoga, and a sport all at once.

What is one goal you want to focus on?

Get Specific

Many goals suffer from being too vague. The more specific a goal is, the better! Vague goals are easy to put off indefinitely and difficult to track. You want your goal to be trackable so you know when you’re making progress and when you’re not.

For example, setting a goal of being healthier might seem like a great idea. But ultimately, “better health” is pretty vague. It could mean so many different things!

It’s such a common fitness goal that it was actually studied. People who set a goal of “being healthier” actually spent the least amount of time exercising during the study (No Sweat, pg. 24). The reason for this? It’s too vague and too far in the future. “Better health” is hard to quantify.

Now that you’ve focused on one goal, can you make your goal more specific?

If you’re not sure right now, that’s okay! The rest of this article will help you get more specific with your goal.

Creating Fitness Goals That Keep You Motivated

Approach vs. Avoidance

Approach goal: a goal that involves reaching or maintaining something desirable
Example: I work out because it makes me feel good.

Avoidance goal: a goal that involves avoiding an undesirable outcome
Example: I work out because I want to stop being lazy.

Is your goal approaching something desirable, or avoiding something undesirable?

The answer to this question actually really matters. A lot of people try to start a fitness plan because they feel bad about themselves in some way. It’s common to hear “I need to lose weight,” “I need to stop being so lazy,” or “I’m working out to prevent <future illness>.” While all those seem like they could be good goals, they’re actually focused on negative outcomes- they’re goals based on fearing a negative impact. Focusing on avoidance goals has even been linked with less satisfaction with life and lower self esteem.

If your goal is an avoidance goal, don’t worry! Pretty much every avoidance goal can be reframed as an approach goal. Approach goals tend to have more meaning and help you stay motivated long-term.

If you’re trying to avoid a negative outcome, what’s the positive outcome that will happen instead? What’s replacing the behavior you want to stop? From one of my previous examples:

Avoidance goal: I’m working out to prevent <future illness>.

Approach goal: I’m working out to stay as healthy as I can be and prioritize strong muscles, strong joints, and strong bones.

See the switch there? Now it’s your turn.

How can you turn your avoidance goal into an approach goal that focuses on what you will gain instead of what you want to lose?

(If you caught it above, losing weight is actually an avoidance goal! It’s one of the most common reasons people start working out, but it falls into a) something people feel like they should want, and b) the avoidance goal category associated with less satisfaction. This is a reason many people who set fitness goals related to weight loss don’t see as much success, or they’re successful at first but drop off quickly.)

Process vs. Outcome

Outcome goal: the end result, what you want to achieve
Example: I want to lift 100lbs

Process goal: the steps you need to take, how you want to achieve
Example: I want to go to the gym three times per week.

Both of these goals are beneficial, especially when they’re paired together. By putting them together, you identify the outcome you want and start to give yourself a roadmap of how to get there. If I go to the gym three times a week, it sets me up for success to reach my outcome goal of lifting 100lbs.

The process goal tends to be smaller and more trackable. I can easily tell if I’ve been going to the gym consistently. It’s a bit more challenging to tell where I am on my journey to lifting 100lbs. The process goal brings a more immediate focus to your goal (more on that later!), even when the outcome goal seems far away.

Looking back to the goal you’ve set so far in this article, is it a process or an outcome goal?

If you’ve set an outcome goal, can you add a process goal that helps give you a more concrete, trackable way to measure progress?

A quick note about outcome goals: It can feel so great to reach your goal! But…. what’s next? Many people lose steam once they’ve reached that initial outcome and fail to set another one. Assuming you want to continue the behavior after you reach your goal, take a minute to think about your next step.

Value-Driven Goals

This might be one of the most important sections of the article. I hate to break it to you, but your journey to your goal won’t be perfect. You’ll mess up, lose motivation, your schedule will change, and something might come along and throw your life out of whack for a while. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed, and it doesn’t mean you stop trying.

The best way to stick with a goal over the course of years and not just months (and for fitness, you get a lot of benefits the longer you stick with it!) is by attaching your goal to a value that you want to embody. Connecting your goal to one of your deep values as a human is the best way to make sure it stays a constant in your life, even when things get out of whack.

Example: My goal is going to the gym because _____. I want to be an active person.

The more value-aligned actions I take, the more proof I give myself that I give myself that I am an active person. It becomes a core part of my identity and keeps me motivated.

As I mentioned above, this also helps when things don’t go the way you planned. Say I’m really busy at work one month and I can’t make it to the gym. Instead of spiraling about missing my scheduled workouts, I can ask myself, “In this situation, what would an active person do?” The answer could be to do something at home, take a walk instead, or try a different activity that fits better for a while. Taking action that’s aligned with your values still helps you work toward your goal, even if it’s not the original plan.

As you set your goal, what value is it attached to?

How can you embody that value even when things don’t go to plan? What would a _____ person do in this situation?

If you identify the value that makes your goal deeply important to you (your why), then you will be more likely to stay consistent with your fitness goals, even as years pass.

This exact reason is why I talk so much about living your life in full color. I want people to find a greater purpose in their lives for fitness. Going to the gym is so often associated with misery, struggle, or even punishment. I want to help people flip the script and figure out how fitness can be an enjoyable part of their lives and support the life they want.

Life Goals vs. Training Goals

You don’t have to have a training goal, but it can help you get to your life goal faster.

Life goal: what we’ve been talking about this whole article; a goal you have for your life; your outcome goal
Example: I want to get stronger so I can play with my kids more.

Training goal: how you train in the gym to help you reach your life goal
Example: I am training for endurance in my workouts so I can play with my kids for longer.

So far throughout this article, you’ve been setting life goals. We haven’t talked at all about how that informs what you do in your workouts. There are six general training goals you can take advantage of in your workouts, each giving you a different outcome in your strength. The training goal you choose partners with your outcome and process goals and helps you figure out how to reach your goal.

I already wrote an entire article about these training goals, so I won’t get into them here. I thought it was important to make some space in this article for training goals, though. If reaching your goal involves strength workouts or going to a gym, training goals can give you a solid path to follow. The “how” is just as important as the “what” and the “why” when it comes to fitness.

Break It Down

Here’s a little bit of real talk: The bigger and farther away your goal is, the harder it’s going to be to stay motivated and focused on it.

Motivational salience is how important something feels to your brain. Even when you really, really want that bigger goal, it’s less salient to your brain because it’s in the future. Big goals and having that deeper “why” is amazing, but there are usually a lot of smaller goals that need to be reached to make your big goal a reality. Hopefully throughout this article so far, you’ve set a really solid goal for yourself. Now, it’s time to break it down into a few smaller goals that are more immediate. Your brain will thank you, and you’ll be able to stay more motivated.

Building momentum is also important when it comes to goals. By reaching these smaller goals in the process of achieving your big one, you’re building momentum and continuing to prove to yourself that you can do it.

Here’s an example:
You watch weightlifting in the Olympics and it makes you really excited about going to the gym and getting active again. You want to feel strong! You set a goal of wanting to squat 100lbs. Here are some smaller goals you can set to help you build momentum toward your big one:

• Goal #1: find a gym
• Goal #2: create a gym schedule
• Goal #3: go to the gym twice a week for a month to get in the habit of doing consistent workouts
• Goal #4: go to the gym three times a week and start a more targeted workout plan to build squat strength

Even each of these smaller goals can get more granular, but you get the idea. Reaching these four smaller goals helps you build momentum toward squatting 100lbs. Especially if your big goal seems overwhelming, breaking it down can help it feel more achievable and sets you up for success. People tend to abandon goals that get too big and overwhelming. You can keep your main goal as the big picture while still focusing on your particular, more immediate goal.

A final note: these smaller goals might adjust or change during your journey. That’s okay! In fitness, you’re playing the long game. It’s very normal for those short-term goals to change in some way.

How can you take your goal and break it down into goals that have a smaller timeframe?

Make your goal a reality.

So now you have a goal…. what’s next? You know what you’re working toward; the next step is to make a plan and start taking action.

Make it Measurable

This is why we want a specific goal instead of a vague one! You want to be able to see concrete progress toward your goal. It can be an amount, like in the example above you want to lift 100lbs. It could also be a timeframe, such as wanting to work out consistently for six months.

How will you know when you reach your goal? How would you describe it to someone else so they understand when you’ve reached your goal?

How can you track progress along the way?

Make a Plan

This is where your goal turns into your daily habits. Answering these questions will be easier if you’ve set a process goal!

How are you going to make sure you keep working toward your goal? What’s your plan to hold yourself accountable?

How can you take daily actions that get you closer to your goal?

Here’s an example:

You want to get stronger to play with your kids, so you’re going to go to the gym twice a week. Your plan is to:

• Schedule your workouts like an appointment you can’t miss
• Hire a coach to give you a workout plan and provide accountability
• Set out your workout clothes and water bottle the night before so it’s easier the next day
• Meal prep every weekend to make sure you have enough food to fuel your body on workout days

All of these actions support you in reaching your goal! Now it’s your turn. If you’re struggling to make a plan, you might need to break your goal down into smaller more achievable pieces.

Schedule Check-Ins

Your brain loves proof! That’s why building momentum and reaching smaller goals sets you up for success. You’re essentially proving to your brain over and over again that you can reach your big goal.

One way to do this is track and celebrate your progress! You can do this by scheduling regular check-ins with yourself, another person, or a group. They should be fairly regular to keep your goal a priority and provide accountability. It’s also helpful to record these check-ins somewhere, like in a journal or the notes app on your phone.

This check-in time is also important for evaluating what is and isn’t working. If you haven’t made progress over the last couple check-ins, does your goal or plan need adjusting? Come up with a few questions you can ask yourself during these check-ins to help you evaluate and celebrate your wins. Even when there’s setbacks, you can still recognize the progress you’ve made and it will make it easier for you get back up and keep going.

When/how will you check in with yourself or with others about your goal?

Make it Visible

Now that you’ve set a goal and you have a solid plan, you want to keep that goal in front of you! Make it as visible as possible to remind yourself what you’re working toward. Put reminders in places you frequent. Make it your phone background. Put a post-it with your goal on the bathroom mirror. Whatever works best for you.

The more reminders you give yourself, the more you’ll think about reaching your goal. It will keep you focused when you’re struggling to stay motivated.

What’s next?

Setting a goal is one very important part of making fitness a consistent part of your life, but it’s not the only part. There are other pieces to creating a long-term fitness plan and working toward enjoying fitness. Changing your mindset around fitness is just as important as the exercises you do in the gym. This is why some of my offers heavily focus on mindset, and others focus on the particulars of strength training. It’s important to me to provide education about both.

If you want to work more on mindset and learning how to make fitness an enjoyable part of your life, check out Train Your Brain and the Electric Workout Challenge.

If you feel okay about your mindset and want to dive into those gym goals, check out Colorful Strength or Prismatic Coaching.

Sources

I’ve learned a lot of fitness mindset and goal setting from these people:

• Karin Nordin and Body Brain Alliance
• Kasey Jo Orvidas
• No Sweat by Michelle Segar