GOAL SETTING AND PROGRESS TRACKING

The New Year is upon us, and even if you choose not to participate in tradition of New Year’s resolutions, it’s a good time to re-evaluate your goals, and an equally good time to start setting some new ones, particularly if you’ve found yourself plateaued or caught in the fitness doldrums as of late.

Whether or not you’re working towards a specific fitness goal, tracking your progress can be a powerful tool in reminding yourself why you come to the gym (beyond just how fun it is). In this article, we’ll go over why goals are important, how to set goals, and how to track your progress in a variety of ways to help create a holistic picture of wellness.

WHY EVEN BOTHER WITH GOALS?

Did you join the gym or start exercising purely on an impulse? Or was there some underlying reason that got you going? Maybe you wanted to drop a pants size, or run a 5k, or learn something new. Most likely you started off with a goal in mind; probably something abstract, somewhat ill-defined, but a goal nonetheless. Probably the most common goal I hear from new members to the gym is to “get into shape” or “lose weight.” These are abstract goals, for which progress is nearly impossible to track. You came to the gym to change something, and well-defined goals are how you track that change.

Research has shown that athletes who use goals consistently generally have improved performance [1]. What’s more, effective goals urge us to attend to the most critical elements of improvement: evidence of learning, short-term results, formative assessment, and recognition & celebration of short-term results [2]. Goals are there to help motivate you, and reward you for success; but goals don’t just have to be about weight change or personal bests.

TYPES OF GOALS

In the fitness realm there are generally two types of goals on which we focus— outcome and performance.

Weight loss is a good example of an outcome goal. But going beyond weight loss, there are other goals one could works towards that would fall under the umbrella of improving one’s health: better body composition, decreased resting heart rate, or an improved blood panel, for example.

Performance goals are things like a faster time in your next 5k, or being able to squat more weight. While abstract ideas or vague approximations may have started you on your fitness journey, when it comes to goals we need to delve a little deeper, and for that, we have SMART goals

SMART Goals

Specific:

Your goals should be specific as possible so as to be able to track progress. “I want to lose weight” or “I want to run faster” aren’t bad goals, but they’re just too general. “I want to lose 10lbs.” or “I want to run a half-marathon in under two hours” are specific goals that are easy to measure.

Measurable

If you can’t measure anything, how will you know if you’ve achieved your goal? The scale is good for weight change, the amount of weight you can lift is easy to measure strength changes, and measuring your resting heart rate can even be done with a free smartphone app and is great way to track improvements in your cardiovascular health.

Achievable

You want to set high goals for yourself, but they still need to be realistic. Running your first ever marathon tomorrow or dropping 20 pounds in a month aren’t realistic, and many times in fitness goals of that nature can be unhealthy. You want your goals to be challenging, but still attainable.

Relevant

First and foremost, your goals should be important to you. While it’s great to have a support system, they shouldn’t be the ones determining your goals. Your goals are what’s gonna keep you exercising, and your friends and family are there to support you when you need a little extra kick in the pants.

Timely

Your goal needs to have an end date. This can seem daunting, especially if the timeline of your goal is a long one. This is where breaking your large goal into several smaller goals with shorter timescales can help fight those times of decreased motivation that arise.

PROGRESS TRACKING

The desire to change something is likely what inspired you to start exercising, and progress tracking is all about quantifying change. I’m a sport scientist, so I’m gonna nerd out a bit here. I want to introduce other ways to measure change beyond just what your bathroom scale says. Weight is just one number and there are many other variables to look at in our holistic picture of health.

Body composition is one you’re likely familiar with—percent body fat. Body comp is a great way to get more depth than just weight. Like I said, weight is just one number, whereas body composition gives us an idea what your weight is comprised of.

A skinfold test is simple, can be performed by a fitness professional, and will not only tell us what percentage of your weight is fat, but will also tell us about where your body stores fat, which can have great impact on other aspects of health. Circumference measurements are another easy, non-invasive measure to help understand your body composition, but they won’t give us a body fat percentage.

Cardiovascular health is another good reflection of health beyond weight and body comp, and one of the best methods is resting heart rate (RHR). Taken first thing in the morning, before you get out of bed, resting heart rate can give us an idea of how much strain your heart is under whilst at rest; with a lower RHR being associated with a “healthier” heart. There are free smartphone apps that use the light and camera on your phone to measure your pulse in the same way as many modern fitness tracking devices (the method is called photoplethysmography, in case you were curious). Using that same technology you can also measure your heart rate variability (HRV).

Without going too in-depth, HRV is essentially just measuring the time interval variation between each individual heart beat, and it gives us a measure of how much physiologic stress your body is under in a rested state; it’s one of the things a cardiologist would calculate if you’ve ever had an electrocardiogram (ECG/EKG). HRV is utilized by many professional sports teams and athletes to track recovery from training sessions. I use an app called HRV4Training to track my HRV daily as well as my training & life stress, recovery, sleep, and a few other subjective variables such as mood and fatigue.  

If you wanted to look more at your cardiorespiratory capacity during exercise the gold standard is still VO2max—the volume of oxygen your body consumes during maximal exercise. A proper test would involve a visit to an exercise physiology lab and breathing through a tube whilst running on a treadmill or riding and exercise bike. I’ve done a lot of them and I wouldn’t rate it as a fun experience. You can, however, get fairly decent results with a field test. Garmin has an app, that when paired with a chest strap heart rate monitor, can give you a pretty good estimation of your VO2max while out for a ride or run.

In the gym there are other ways to track your progress. We can go old school and see how many push-ups we can do, just like in elementary school. This would be a measure of your muscular endurance, albeit, only for your pecs and triceps.

If you’re in our small group personal training sessions you’re already tracking your personal bests on the various primary lifts, such as squat and deadlift. You can also track your progress in a normal matrix bootcamp with common movement patterns such as the deadlift by noting which kettlebell you use on a pull strength day.

Flexibility is an oft-overlooked measure of fitness. The Functional Movement Screen (FMS) can give a good measure of your flexibility and mobility across many muscles and joints. FMS can be performed at any of our locations and is included in your on-point session. If you haven’t done one in some time (or ever) I’d highly recommend scheduling a session and evaluating your FMS.

REGULAR TRACKING

The frequency with which you track your various goals is also important. Weighing your self every day isn’t advisable, because your weight can have little fluctuations day-to-day based on factors like water intake or even the humidity of the air.

Generally, you want to track your progress at set intervals, spaced out evenly across your timeline. Once a week is good to see change in your total body weight, whereas things like RHR, body composition, VO2max, and FMS have a longer timeline to observe meaningful change, so every few months is as frequent as you’d want to measure those. Changes in muscular strength and endurance can generally be observed as often as every month, but you can also do little checks.

There are far more ways to track your progress, but hopefully this is a good introduction to some alternative methods you may not have previously considered. And, with more ways to track your progress, you can set even more SMART goals for yourself in the weeks and months to come.

Cheers!

Aaron

Citations:
Burton, D. and Weiss, C. (2008). Advances in Sport Psychology (3rd ed.). Human Kinetics; 339-385.
Conzemius, A., & O'Neill, J. (2009). The power of SMART goals: Using goals to improve student learning. Solution Tree Press.