Week 10 – S.M.A.R.T.

Week 10 - S.M.A.R.T.

Fitters,

With week 10 upon us for our goals I thought a short goal recap could keep us focused in the summer heat. As we run our goals should be S.M.A.R.T.

What does S.M.A.R.T. goal setting stand for? To make your goal S.M.A.R.T., it needs to conform to the following criteria: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Specific
What exactly do you want to achieve? The more specific your description, the bigger the chance you’ll get exactly that. S.M.A.R.T. goal setting clarifies the difference between ‘I will run 5:39 in my fall marathon!’

Questions you may ask yourself when setting your goals and objectives are:

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Measurable
Measurable goals means that you identify exactly what it is you will see, hear and feel when you reach your goal. It means breaking your goal down into measurable elements. You’ll need concrete evidence. Being faster is not evidence; adhering to the USA Fit DC schedule, is.

Measurable goals can go a long way in refining what exactly it is that you want, too. Defining the physical manifestations of your goal or objective makes it clearer, and easier to reach.

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Attainable
Is your goal attainable? That means investigating whether the goal really is acceptable to you. You weigh the effort, time and other costs your goal will take against the profits and the other obligations and priorities you have in life.

If you don’t have the time, money or talent to reach a certain goal you’ll certainly fail and be miserable. That doesn’t mean that you can’t take something that seems impossible and make it happen by planning smartly and going for it!

There’s nothing wrong with shooting for the stars; if you aim to make your race time twice as fast this year as it was last year, how bad is it when you only reach 1,8 times? Not too bad…

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Relevant.

The main questions, why do you want to reach this goal? What is the objective behind the goal, and will this goal really achieve that?

S.M.A.R.T. goal setting: Timely
Make a tentative plan of everything you do. Everybody knows that deadlines are what makes most people switch to action. So install deadlines, for your training, and go after them. Keep the timeline realistic and flexible, that way you can keep morale high. Being too stringent on the timely aspect of your goal setting can have the perverse effect of making the learning path of achieving your goals and objectives into a hellish race against time – which is most likely not how you want to achieve anything. I will run a 5k in August, or a prep half in September is timely.

SMART+ goals
Another thing that’s very important when setting SMART goals, is formulating it POSITIVELY. Remember that what you focus on, increases. So when you focus on NOT doing something, all you think about is that thing. And it will increase. So don’t ‘stop procrastinating’, but ‘achieve a daily discipline’.

SMART goal setting with YourCoach
The certified USAFit coaches are more than willing to help in setting S.M.A.R.T. training goals and objectives, turning them into measurable goals and following up on their completion. That means training, helping, steering and cheering on the solution of your training challenges.

Keep the Pace

- Coach Chris