If you have a specific training goal; say to lose a certain amount of weight, run the London marathon, or get the “perfect” physique, then “goal setting” could be for you.Goal setting involves not only having a realistic end goal which you want to achieve and use as motivation whenever you feel like quitting, but also setting achievable milestone(s) part way to this goal.
If necessary, it is worthwhile setting a number of small milestones that lead and build up to the end goal. Imagine your goal is to run the London marathon, your motivation or end goal is obviously the marathon itself, but your achievable milestone(s) may be a local half marathon of 13miles. A half marathon is much more achievable, but will undoubtedly still require significant training. Therefore some smaller milestones leading up to the milestone half marathon may be necessary. A sensible start for these would be a few specific length runs, these could be either mile or time markers. For example, milestones may be 4 miles, 6 miles, 8 miles etc or a 30minutes run, 45minutes run, 1hour run etc. It may be necessary as these milestones are reached to reassess at what point the milestone will be achievable, (you may be ahead of time, you may be behind time), and change the training accordingly.
Smart Training
The acronym “SMART” is a good way of putting your goals and milestones together. Smart stands for;
- Specific – as in all your goals must be specific and not general
- Measurable – as stated above, a certain number of miles, or a certain time, or a specific amount of weight. Just saying “I want to be fitter by a certain date” is not measurable.
- Achievable – when setting a goal it must be achievable, if your goal is to run a marathon, but the race is in 3 weeks time, I would say than is unachievable for most people.
- Realistic – going hand in hand with achievable, there is no point having a goal if it is totally unrealistic. For example not many of us could ever run a marathon in under 2 and a half hours, so this as an aim would not count as realistic.
- Timed – you must put realistic time scales on your goals otherwise you will never reach them as there is no real pressure on you to train and improve. Even if the times have to be modified, everyone needs something to work to.
Not everyone needs to set goals, however, for those who don’t, they are usually happy with where they are in life and have no real desires. For most of us this is not the case, it is human nature to want to improve, we all want to be like the next person, so set yourself a goal, give yourself a time-frame and make it happen.
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