What Are Common Workout Goals & How Do You Set the Right One?
For newcomers to the gym environment (or gym-goers returning from a long sabbatical), setting workout goals can be daunting, especially for a beginner building a new fitness routine.
After all, every fitness goal is highly personal: What we do inside the gym often reflects our lives outside the gym. Whether you want to build enough endurance to keep up with young kids or build strength you can use in the workplace, you have to find a way to turn your vision into an actionable plan.
That’s the topic of this guide. Below, we’ll help you identify possible fitness objectives, create actionable plans, and overcome common challenges on your way to fitness success.
What Are the 4 Main Goals of Fitness?
After starting a gym membership, it’s time to set a goal—but you may not know exactly where to begin.
Setting fitness goals starts with understanding these four broad areas of physical fitness that can shape your workout routine and overall fitness goal:
- Cardiorespiratory endurance – Sometimes called “aerobic fitness,” cardiorespiratory endurance describes how well (and for how long) your lungs and heart can sustain high-intensity activity. One practical benchmark of cardiorespiratory endurance is how you feel after climbing multiple flights of stairs: If you don’t feel winded after a few floors, you likely have high endurance. Activities like brisk walking, intervals, and other cardio sessions can improve this area over time.
- Muscular strength and endurance – With muscle strength, you can contract muscles or move against resistance (i.e., pick up a heavy weight) with ease. With muscle endurance, you can sustain this performance over a long period. This area often improves through strength training, weightlifting, and a balanced strength workout that helps you feel stronger in daily life.
- Flexibility – Flexibility describes how well your joints can move through an entire range of motion: how comfortably you can touch your toes, for example. Mobility work can increase flexibility while also supporting overall strength.
- Maintaining body composition – The ratios of fat, bone, and muscle to your overall body weight are markers of body composition. While we often think of body composition as purely aesthetic, it’s the foundation for everyday functioning; with a high enough ratio of muscles to body weight, you can accomplish common strength-based tasks (like moving heavy boxes). It can also support overall health, because weight alone rarely tells the whole story.
Current Goals Create Future Gains
With clear-well-structured goals, you can improve your motivation, build consistency, and create positive results, while keeping you on track for long-term success.
In other words, goals are the foundation of gains.
But our fitness goals are almost always tied to our:
- Personal preferences – If you love hiking on the weekends, you’ll likely enjoy cardio-heavy activities like walking on a treadmill. If you’re a social butterfly, a group fitness class would probably be a rewarding experience for you. As best as possible, you should try to align your fitness goals with your personal preferences—working out should be fun and self-care can be part of the process!
- Lifestyles – If you’re a working parent with limited free time, a goal to work out for two hours every weekday probably won’t work for you—but committing to a thirty-minute flexibility routine on Saturdays and Sundays might be more achievable. When your goals fit seamlessly into your lifestyle, you’re more likely to pursue (and achieve) them. Your current activity level, schedule, and recovery needs all matter when you make fitness a sustainable part of your life.
SMART Goals 101
But how do you set goals that align with your personal preferences and lifestyle? One approach is creating fitness goals with the SMART framework.
SMART is an acronym:
- Specific – SMART goals are bite-sized: small enough to tackle head-on with a simple plan focused on one exercise or one habit at a time.
- Measurable – SMART goals can be measured with numbers; they need to be quantifiable so that you can track your progress over time.
- Achievable – SMART goals are achievable—in other words, they’re possible to accomplish in your set timeframe, within your lifestyle constraints, and according to your ability level.
- Relevant – SMART goals are relevant to some part of your life—or your vision for your life. Relevance is the foundation for personal investment and can support physical and mental health.
- Time-Bound – SMART goals are pursued within a set timeframe. Setting a timeline for goals prevents procrastination and forces you to reassess your goals at a certain time. Every strong fitness goal should be time-bound.
A smart goal works best when you already have a clear goal in mind and know what you would like to achieve.
Let’s explore a few examples of SMART workout goals:
- Deadlifting 1.5 times your body weight in three months
- S: Deadlifting is one specific exercise.
- M: Weight is easy to measure and track.
- A: This goal is achievable if you can perform the deadlift movement.
- R: This goal is relevant to other, wider goals: like building functional strength.
- T: Three months is a set timeframe.
- Running a 5k without stopping in six months
- S: Running is a specific activity, and 5K is a set distance.
- M: Distance and numbers of stops are measurable.
- A: This goal is achievable if you are physically able to run.
- R: This goal is relevant to overall endurance—a common fitness goal.
- T: Six months is a set timeframe.
- Touching your toes within six weeks
- S: Toe-touches are a specific exercise.
- M: There are only two possible outcomes: touching your toes or not.
- A: This goal is achievable if you have the ability to stand and bend at the waist.
- R: This goal is relevant to overall flexibility and mobility.
- T: Six weeks is a set timeframe.
Workout Goals: Examples and Tips
With the above in mind, let’s explore additional fitness goal examples. We’ll break them down into three main categories: skill-based goals, performance goals, and consistency goals. Together, they can shape a realistic workout routine built around both short-term goals and long-term goals.
Skill-Based Goals
Newcomers and long-time gym-goers alike often strive to learn gym skills—specific exercises and movements they can use to reach their wider fitness goals.
Some examples include:
- Mastering a kettlebell swing
- Squatting with proper form
- Walking comfortably on a treadmill
- Holding a yoga pose correctly
Of course, these still need to be turned into SMART goals. Here’s what these examples might look like if they were tweaked to meet the SMART format:
- Mastering a kettlebell swing with a 5lb weight in two weeks
- Squatting half of your body weight with proper form in three months
- Walking at 3 mph for 20 minutes on the treadmill in one week
- Holding Warrior I correctly for two minutes in three weeks
Performance Goals
Instead of mastering a specific skill, perhaps you want to perform better in a certain fitness area. Performance goals are very common in the fitness community, but the SMART framework is the ticket to keeping performance goals achievable.
Common performance goals include:
- Improving your running speed
- Lifting heavier weights
- Increasing flexibility
- Boosting coordination and balance
If you’re looking to improve and accomplish any of the goals above, it can be difficult to choose a direction. After all, there are multiple ways to improve your coordination and balance: playing a team sport, taking a yoga class, or performing balance-specific weights exercises are all possible routes to reach this goal.
So, if you’re looking to improve performance, distill your overall goal into a SMART-compatible plan:
- Increasing your treadmill speed by 0.1 mph each week for four weeks
- Increasing your squat by 5 lb per week for two months
- Pushing harder to touch your toes each day for one week
- Taking a kickboxing class once a week for six months
If you need more structure, a personal trainer or a guided training program can help you progress safely, especially if you want to chase a new personal record.
Consistency Goals
In the examples above, you’ll notice that each SMART goal has a consistency element: increasing your speed slightly each week, increasing your squat weight each week, and so on.
If your goals are mostly related to consistency, it’s easy to use the SMART framework to make an actionable plan and stay consistent with your workout schedule.
But why lean into the SMART approach if you’re just looking to go to the gym more often? Because consistency goals, like performance goals, are often vague. And without a specific direction, you may be less likely to build (and stick with) a routine.
Take the following general consistency goals, for example:
- Using the stair stepper more often
- Attending more pilates classes
- Doing a “leg day” once a week
- Stretching every morning
The SMART framework can help you turn these general goals into actionable ones:
- Using the stair stepper every Monday for four weeks
- Going to pilates every Wednesday after work for six months
- Doing five leg-specific exercises every Saturday for two months
- Following a stretching video every morning at 9:00
These smaller consistency wins can also help you stay consistent when life gets busy and give you a real sense of accomplishment.
The more specific your goals are, the easier they are to act on. If you’re trying to be more consistent, start small—even a five-minute commitment each day can quickly develop into a solid routine that supports realistic goals and helps you stay motivated with healthy habits, physical activity, and a fitness routine that fits your life.
Overcoming Hurdles
Right after starting a gym trial, you might be highly motivated and ready to commit to a routine—but this enthusiasm can be hard to sustain.
This is just one of many challenges you might face on your fitness journey. Others include:
- Contending with progress plateaus
- Finding time to exercise
- Staying consistently motivated to go to the gym
Used as intended, the SMART framework can help you address all of these:
- Since SMART goals have a set end date, they provide a natural reflection point. If you’ve reached a plateau at the end of your six-month goal, this is the perfect time to switch up your approach, adjust your goal, and find a new way to work toward better performance.
- SMART goals with frequency details (i.e., taking a pilates class every Wednesday) force you to examine your schedule. SMART goals give you the opportunity to make a standing appointment with yourself and protect your time to exercise.
- With SMART goals, the thing you want to achieve is always in sight. If you set a fitness goal to squat 200 lb in six months, every visit to the gym has a clear purpose: getting a little closer to 200 lb every time you work out. Clarity of purpose is the antidote to lack of motivation and can also help you stay consistent and move toward your goal.
Chuze: A Fitness Community Supporting Your Goals
Your fitness goals should be highly personalized—and ultra-actionable. By considering your preferences and leveraging the SMART goal framework, you can curate highly specific goals that meet your needs and keep you motivated.
But clear goals aren’t the only tool in the fitness enthusiast’s toolbox: A strong fitness community can make all the difference as you pursue positive change because fitness goals help more when you have support, accountability, and in-person encouragement.
Chuze Fitness is the supportive fitness community you’re looking for. With friendly, helpful staff and clean, highly organized facilities, our gyms are more than rooms full of equipment: they’re rooms full of people who can support your workout, cardio, strength training, or even crossfit style interests depending on your fitness goal.
You deserve an awesome gym and an awesome gym community. Find a Chuze Fitness near you to get started.
Sources:
- Nutrition: Science and Everyday Application. Essential Elements and Benefits of Physical Fitness. https://openoregon.pressbooks.pub/nutritionscience/chapter/10a-physical-fitness-elements-benefits
- Cleveland Clinic. Cardiovascular Endurance. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/24754-cardiovascular-endurance
- Southeastern Oklahoma State University. Muscular Endurance for Athletic Performance. https://online.se.edu/programs/business/ms-sports-administration/general-concentration/muscular-endurance-for-athletic-performance/
- University of California Davis. Flexibility. https://health.ucdavis.edu/sports-medicine/resources/flexibility
- University of California Davis. Body Composition. https://health.ucdavis.edu/sports-medicine/resources/body-fat
- Corporate Finance Institute. SMART Goals. https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/smart-goal/
Reviewed By:
Ani is the Vice President of Fitness at Chuze Fitness and oversees the group fitness and team training departments. She’s had a 25+ year career in club management, personal training, group exercise and instructor training. Ani lives with her husband and son in San Diego, CA and loves hot yoga, snowboarding and all things wellness.
