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Weight Loss Exercise

SMART Goals



Most beginner dieters, weightlifters, heck any fitness person is impatient to get started and skip the most important step – setting smart goals. As a result, they soon lose focus and motivation. The first burst of energy that starts us on the road to building a great body soon fades away, especially since most beginners quickly wear themselves thin by overtraining. If you do not have clear goals to keep up your motivation at this point, you can easily lose your way.

Creating SMART Goals

So take some time right now to write down your goals. Like any goals that you might set in work or life, your goals in bodybuilding should be S.M.A.R.T. – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Timely. Let’s look at what each of these smart goals parts means in terms of bodybuilding workouts.

SMART Goal – Specific

SMART Goals

SMART Goals

A specific smart goals is one that clearly says what you want to accomplish, along with how, when and where you will do it. ‘Get a great body’ is not a specific goal. ‘Go to the gym 4 days a week after work and train to build muscle mass’ is a more specific goal.

Even better, say exactly which muscles you will work on which days, and note down your routine. The routine for your bodybuilding workouts will change as you make progress but the overall goal of going to the gym 4 days a week to build muscle mass will remain the same.

SMART Goal –  Measurable

When you are working toward smart goals, it is very important to have some way to measure your progress.

If your goal is going to the gym for bodybuilding workouts 4 days a week, you can easily track that in a diary. But with a goal like ‘get a great body’, there is nothing to measure. So if you want to set goals in terms of the physical result, do it in terms of inches gained or weight that you can lift.

SMART Goal – Attainable

It is important to know when you have reached your smart goals. That way you can plan a reward or celebration, have a sense of achievement and start thinking about your next bodybuilding workouts goal.

This means that the goal itself, as well as your progress toward it, must be something that you can measure and know whether or not you have achieved. So your goal is to go to the gym 4 days a week – but for how long? The rest of your life? If you think that way, you will never be able to congratulate yourself on having achieved the goal. A month would be good for a beginner. Then set a new goal.

SMART Goal –  Realistic

Your smart goals needs to be something that it is possible for you to attain in a reasonable period of time. Remember that goals can change. You do not need to start out with the goal of winning the Mr. Universe contest. If contests are your thing, start with winning your division in a local contest. However, if you believe you can win Mr. Universe, then go for that. It is all a matter of believing you can do it.

SMART Goal – Timely

Whatever type of smart goals you set, it is good to give it a timeframe. Are you going for this year’s contest, next year’s or two years from now? Be specific about how much time you have to achieve your goal, and you will be set for success in any of the beginner bodybuilding workouts that you choose.

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Weight Loss Exercise

How Smart Goals Work

How Smart Goals Work

How smart goals work

People often ask me how smart goals work. Today I want you to look back at the list that you made yesterday and decide what is really important to you. I have written in the past about “SMART” goals and these are something else we will talk about today.

First lets look at what is important and what you want to focus on this year. In looking at yesterdays list I am sure that emotionally you cringed at some of the bad things that happened because you knew full well that they were you own fault. Where they really important to YOU or where they important because others make them important to you.

At the same time for many goals we will make them because they just look good. “lose 20 pounds” is a great unemotional goal that a lot of people make but will that change your life? Along the same line will losing 50 pounds do it? Losing weight is a nice goal in one way because it will give you a yardstick but in the end it is kind of meaningless without a result.

Instead you main health goals should give you a sense of the new you when you see them. A goal like lose 20 pounds, get a makeover and new clothes to look smokin’ hot would be more in tune with making an emotional difference.

Finally the goal that you are setting has to make sense to you in a year or more out. If you had a goal that was to get in better shape then you would not really have much to go on a year from now. How could you tell if you were in better shape? Was it enough to you or not?

How smart goals work

This leads us to the idea of SMART goals and how smart goals work. A SMART goal is on that is specific, measurable, accurate, realistic, and time bound. Here are some examples of these five criteria for a goal.

S = Specific – Instead of saying that you want to lose weight you say you want to lose 20 pounds

M = Measurable – To lose 20 pounds in a year you need to lose 2 pounds per month and know that you have 4 flex pounds for the year

A = Attainable – The goal must be something that can be attained by you. Do you really want this and why?

R = Realistic – Is it realistic that you can lose 20 pounds in a year? If you have never lost 5 pounds before why would it be realistic that you could lose 20 pounds?

T = Timely – You need a time boundary. We have two here 2 pounds lost per month and also the 20 pounds in a year.

So now that you know how to set a good goal and know how smart goals work, you can accomplish it in time for you to set a few of your own. Try to keep the list down to 3 goals as the problem that you will see is that if you have a large list of goals you will have trouble keeping them straight and having them work out at the same time.

And one last thing. Make sure again that those new years resolutions are not sterile. Have fun with them and make sure they are emotionally fulfilling to you. Now that you know how smart goals work you can have fun with them and make your dreams really come true